An Okotoks area teacher had a smile and tears across her face when she tried out a new hairstylist last week.
“I cancelled my hair appointment two weeks ago,” Strathcona-Tweedsmuir teacher Tina Kennedy said with a laugh. “She (her hairstylist) will find out in a month or two when I go in for a trim.”
Kennedy took care of any hairstyles for a while when she had her curly locks cut for the school’s head-shaving for cancer research celebration on Friday. The tears she shed when STS assistant principal Chris Schneider started cutting her hair weren’t out of vanity, they were in memory of loved ones who battled cancer.
“It’s mostly because of the memory of my grandmother and the way cancer has impacted by family,” Kennedy said of the tears she shed. “My great-grandparents died of cancer when there was no treatment, and my grandparents have all been impacted by cancer, and my one grandmother died of it and all of her sisters died of breast cancer.”
Kennedy’s mother is a breast-cancer survivor.
The tears of joy was for the more than $17,000 raised by STS students throughout October for the Terry Fox Foundation. Seven of them, as well as seven teachers, had either their hair completely sheared or in some cases at least eight inches of hair cut off.
Kennedy said watching her loved ones going through chemotherapy was one of the reasons she volunteered to sit in the barber’s chair.
“For my mother, I am just thankful that she is still around, but it took a toll on her,” Kennedy said. “I would like to see the research go in a direction where the treatment is not going to debilitate the person in the process – that quality of life can be maintained throughout the process.”
Although she had a nice, wavy hairstyle prior to the cutting, she’s taking a hair today, gone tomorrow-like attitude.
“It’s lighter and preen at the moment,” she said shortly after being sheered. “I don’t get too attached to vanity pieces because of my grandmother who taught me not to.
It’s just hair, it’s going to grow back.”
She was more than happy to step forward for the student-driven initiative.
STS has raised more than $600,000 in its 31 years involved with the Terry Fox Foundation.
