Our Community has been through a journey. We recently lost a brave young man named Tyler Smith. He battled a rare form of Liver Cancer until it just recently took his life on May 20th, 2012. The Logo that was made for him and his battle with cancer is what you see on this sign above.
F2TF stands for Fight 2 The Finish
This young man touched many lives. His family has been supported not only by friends and family and the community, but also by an organization called Anything for a Friend. During Tyler's last days he expressed to Becky, a representative of Anything for a Friend, that for his funeral he would love to have a balloon launch!
Tyler was a friend of my boys. He went to school with them. When the call came from my friend Aimee for the need for volunteers to help with this Balloon Launch, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to be apart of something neat like this!
It's Important to do good things! This was important. Several of us volunteers met early this morning at 6:30 am. We helped get 500 balloons ready and were organized into sections. The balloons were placed on each side of the road all along the route from Tyler's home to the Church where his service was held today. We did this early this morning so his family would ride along this balloon route on their way to the Church and see all the balloons. His family did not know anything about this! It was fun to set up the balloons so early this morning for the surprise.
Here are a few shots of the set up...
Cancer affects us all. Ryan and his family lost Ryan's amazing brother Kent to cancer two years after
Ryan and I were first Married. My beautiful & wonderful cousin Jackie just recently passed away from Cancer last December. It is important to always remember these individuals and how they have touched our lives and cherish the time we've had to spend with them. It is also important to support efforts to win the fight against cancer and support others who are fighting cancer and dealing with the loss of a loved one to cancer. I saw this saying on a Shirt, Friends don't let friends fight cancer alone and that is just what this community did. They supported Tyler & the Smith family.
After the family went by, we needed to get the balloons back to the Church so they would be available for the launch. After an amazing service that Celebrated Tyler's life, we passed out balloons to the crowd and then in a sweet quiet silence, Tyler's mom said, "Let them go..."
If you would like to read more about Tyler and his journey, his family has a blog: http://fight2thefinish.com/families-are-forever-2/
God Bless you Tyler Smith and the Smith Family.
If you would like to visit the Anything for a friend website, here is the link for that. http://www.anythingforafriend.com/
*On a lighter note, I promise I am still going to post a couple things about Madi's Birthday, I just wanted to share with you this neat experience we got to participate in today. It was an honor to be apart of the Celebration of Tyler's Life!
With Much Love & Gratitude,
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