Return to story

Grace's memory lives on through foundation

June 3, 2008 12:15 am

BY AMY FLOWERS UMBLE

For nearly two years, Crystal Oughton craved a normal life.

Now, she would trade in every peaceful second of housework, routine and school drop-offs for nights interrupted by beeping machines and nurses, days filled with IVs and side effects, and weeks measured by the gossip at the playroom of the pediatric cancer ward at New York City's Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital.

The chaos would mean she still had her daughter, Grace, who died Oct. 29. She was 3 years old.

For two years prior, Crystal, husband Alec and their son, Landon, were allies in their daughter's battle with neuroblastoma, an aggressive form of cancer that usually appears in infants and toddlers.

It showed up in Grace's body when she was 19-months old. Just after her diagnosis in January 2006, a doctor sat down with Crystal and Alec and said, "If this is the worst-case scenario, you need to know you did everything."

Those words sent the Oughtons on a two-year journey from their Caroline County home to Boston and New York, while they tried any treatment that could save Grace's life.

Alec, a firefighter for Henrico County, traveled back and forth between "the hidden world" of cancer wards and the fire station in Virginia. Landon often stayed with grandparents, so he could attend preschool and kindergarten.

When Alec and Crystal first rushed Grace to Boston, friends immediately recognized the family would need money. They raised $10,000 in the first three days.

Over the next two years, Alec and Crystal lost a lot of sleep: when side effects kept Grace up past 3 a.m., when mothers called in the middle of the night to announce another fellow cancer patient had died, when the routine of the oncology ward was too loud for sleep.

Sometimes, Alec said, they'd wake up worrying about money. But the donations eased their minds.

They no longer have to worry about how to supplement Crystal's salary while she's taking care of Grace or how to afford the gas to get Alec back to work.

Now, Alec and Crystal hope the Grace Oughton Cancer Foundation will help other families.

The nonprofit foundation has changed its focus from helping the Oughtons to helping others. It gives money to pediatric cancer education and research. It also helps families through grants.

But the Oughtons provide more than just money, said Tanya Corbin, one of the recipients. She'd heard of the Oughtons more than a year before she needed the grant.

Her daughter, Paige, attended Fredericksburg Baptist Church's preschool, where Landon went. Corbin had seen signs about Grace and sent chocolates and a book of devotions in a care package for Crystal during Grace's treatments in Boston.

A year later, Corbin's pediatrician told her a lump in her 6-month-old son's abdomen was probably neuroblastoma. Everyone she talked to mentioned the Oughtons, and when Ethan was released from the hospital nine days later, she called them.

It felt awkward calling a perfect stranger, Corbin said, but the Oughtons talked to her like long-lost friends. They recommended she try New York, and Alec even offered parking tips, Corbin said.

Ethan is now doing well, and in November, doctors said there was no evidence of the disease. The Oughtons' foundation gave the Corbins money, which will help pay some of the travel and medical bills.

Alec said the foundation helps him and Crystal more than it does families like the Corbins. It provides comfort to know Grace's name will live on, he said. And now, he and Crystal, an NICU nurse, can go back to what they do best.

"We've always been the helpers," he said. "Not the helpees."

Amy Flowers Umble: 540/735-1973
Email: aumble@freelancestar.com