Showing her love

By Loretta Y. Gillespie The Cullman Times

CULLMAN — Mary-Kate Stanford watched as her mother’s long dark hair fell to the floor. She was being brave for her mom, Maria, because she knew why her beautiful tresses had to come off. Mary-Kate’s mom had cancer.

Mary-Kate was 4 years old in 2005 when her mom was diagnosed.

“Once I started chemotherapy treatments, Jimmy Drake and his staff encouraged me to get it cut a little at a time, so I went in every week for a trim - they were my support group — like my church family, and my family at work at Cullman Regional Medical Center,” explained Maria.

“The day finally came when I was loosing ‘chunks’ of hair, and late one evening, my mother, Mary-Kate and I went to get that last haircut.”

“Jimmy tried, but he just couldn’t cut it,” recalled Maria, “so another stylist, Tammy Parker, took the shears.”                  

Maria didn’t cry, but Tammy did as her scissors closed over Maria’s thick waves.

“When I found the lump, I was laying there in bed with my one-and-a-half-year-old son, Jackson,” Maria said. “It was right around Christmas. I rolled over and felt a knot on my left breast, but I was so tired that I just fell asleep,” she said.

“The lump was about four centimeters; I had a digital mammogram which is a computer aided device that can manipulate the images.  It magnifies them, so they could see and tell that the cancer had spread outward. I could see it too, and I was just numb.”

“An ultra-sound confirmed what the doctor and radiologist had suspected: it was cancer.”

“As I sat there, alone Dr. Nicholson, the radiologist, he continued to explain it to me, but I couldn’t make myself concentrate on what he was saying,” she said. “In a few days, they conducted a lumpectomy.”

“Afterward, I could feel the prayers and blessings of this whole community. Everyone was so good to us, they brought meals, cakes, and books and other gifts, in an expression of their love and support,” she said.  

“At that point, our lives turned into a new ‘normal,’” she explained. “When something like this happens, you love harder, you parent differently, and you definitely lean more on your faith in God.”

“Things like making sure your house is spotless just don’t seem to matter any more. You learn what’s really important.”

As time went by, and Mary-Kate was old enough to finally figure out what cancer really was and what it did to people, she made the decision to cut her own hair for Locks of Love.

After seeing a friend in kindergarten go through cancer treatments, loosing his hair, and being so sick, she made a very grown-up decision.

In the first grade, she started letting her hair grow long enough to donate it for another child or young lady who was going through the same thing her mother had.

“I wanted to ship it to Locks of Love and let them make it into a wig to give to people like my Mom, who had lost all their own hair,” the 9-year-old said.

“When she first made the decision, she came and told her dad, Steve, and I what she was going to do,” said Maria. “I was about two and a half years out from my treatments at the time.”

“That was one of the proudest moments of my life,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. “You teach your children to love one another, to respect others, and you try to lead them by example.”

“Then when they make a choice like that, to help someone they don’t even know, it really shows that they care.’

When Mary-Kate wanted to donate her locks again this month, they made another trip down to J.Drake Salon, where once more Mary-Kate donned the cape, sat in the chair, and was measured for the specific length that is necessary for the requirements of donating hair to Locks of Love.

Her long, shining mane of blonde hair is nine inches, from where it is gathered into a ponytail holder, to the tip ends, meaning she has another two inches to go. The Locks of Love organization requires that it be eleven inches long.

Mary-Kate is a straight A student in the third grade at East Elementary, and has already plotted her course in life; she wants to be an anestheologist.

“I didn’t cry when I got my own hair cut. To tell you the truth, I was just thankful to be alive, but I did cry when I saw Mary-Kate’s cut,” said Maria. “In fact, the whole crew at J. Drake Salon, who had been with me through all my treatments just a couple of years before, stood there crying as Mary-Kate’s was cut.” 

“I liked my new haircut the last time. It was chin length, and I could fix it all by myself,” smiled the vivacious youngster.

Active in sports, Mary-Kate plays softball, basketball, and does gymnastics, but her first priority is dancing.

“You know, we all have our dramas and traumas in life. They hit us in different ways, but I don’t see myself as any different from others who have had this disease,” reflected Maria.

“I see people with cancer everyday, and it is something that must be faced and conquered.”

At the time she had her surgery, Maria was in stage two of a stage-four cancer. She had a lumpectomy, followed by chemotherapy, then later a bi-lateral mastectomy with lymph node dysectomy, and finally, radiation therapy every day for ten days.

Today, she is a cancer survivor, who works full-time at CRMC as marketing and public relations director, a busy wife, and mom of two active children.

Running her fingers through her daughter’s long flaxen locks, she smiles with pride at the ebullient little girl who was so determined to help others, like her mother, who faced losing their hair.

“She knew right after she cut it the first time that she was going to grow it out again, to donate it to someone who needed it more than she did,” said Maria.

Jackie Cadle, the stylist at J.Drake Salon who cut Mary-Kate’s hair that first time, will soon snip off the 11-inch ponytail that has taken Mary-Kate a little over a year to re-grow, for the second time. 

This selfless act of kindness on Mary-Kate’s part will become the flowing, golden tresses of some other little girl, perhaps one who faces cancer or some other debilitating childhood disease. 

As she looks into the mirror at her reflection, at what a total stranger has done for her, she will probably think what a wonderful, generous person that other little girl must be.



* For more information on Locks of Love, contact www.LocksofLove.org

* Contact Gidget Overton at 256-736-1506, for information on a Relay for Life program called, “ Look Good, Feel Better,” which helps people with cancer to obtain wigs.