DILLON’S ARMY
To Our Wonderful Family, Friends and Community:
When you are considered so unique that only 500 people worldwide are classified with your label, typically wonderful images come to mind: Olympic athlete, astronaut, multimillion-lottery winner. Who could have imagined that our adorable 5-year-old son Dillon would be diagnosed with Niemann-Pick Type C Disease – a disease so rare that only 500 people worldwide have the same diagnosis?
Although it was a difficult decision to go public with our personal heartbreak, we understood that Dillon’s only hope for a timely cure would be to promote awareness of his battle that would hopefully lead to the necessary funding for critical research.
Many of you have not only provided extremely generous donations but have also organized your own fundraisers in honor of Dillon. There were bake sales; several Bowie Baysox Benefits; Grandma Maris’s Birthday Celebration; Nanny’s 85th Surprise Party; Hildy and Del’s double birthday fondue bash; our neighbor’s holiday event and surprise trip to Florida for Orioles Spring Training; Nanny Rose’s Red Hat Ladies donation; Jessica’s Greensboro Grasshoppers Baseball Benefit; Pop-pop and Grandma Jan’s Holiday Event; Starman and Goldsmith Family Newsletters; Daybridge’s monthly events; William’s 5th Birthday Party; business donations; your affiliated associations, synagogue and church donations; articles in local papers; and donations from music events to highlight a few. At the end of the year, we even had over 20 children and adults from one family share in the holiday spirit by giving up one gift each to collectively send an extremely generous donation in honor of Dillon and the other children.
After a year of tireless commitment and dedication, our incredible neighbors hosted the 1st Annual Dillon Papier Charity Golf Tournament, which raised an astonishing $50,000 for research. They exceeded their goal by $40,000 — a gift beyond words.
We are ecstatic to announce that in our first 14 months of fundraising, you have raised over $95,000 for the National Niemann-Pick Disease Foundation toward Type C research in honor of Dillon.
It has been an amazing year because of your support. Words alone can not express our gratitude for your overwhelming outpouring of love and support through this past year. Your continued thoughtfulness, kindness and generosity provide us strength and encouragement each day, and the greatest gift of all – “The Gift of Hope.”