Grant Summaries & Media

Lynette Mar-Denson

Stage 4 Metastatic Breast Cancer

Inaugural St John Heals grant recipient

Summary: 

Lynette and her beautiful family became the first ever recipients of our “St John Heals” grant.  Lynette, who had been battling stage 4 metastatic breast cancer since 2012, posted a heartfelt plea to a St John travel group on Facebook asking for help.   As her health challenges progressed and her mobility became limited, her last wish was to travel to the magical island of St John to spend quality time with her husband and two young children.  As fate would have it, and since Covid-19 had shut down the music industry, the team at Concerts for Cancer were looking for ways to deliver experience grants to the cancer fighter community outside of our traditional Music Heals grant process.   Given our own connection to St John and the role it played in our story, one of our founders was active in the St John facebook group where Lynette posted.  Within 3 weeks of seeing her post we had partnered with local St John business owners to custom build our first ever St John Heals grant for Lynette and her amazing family.  Thanks to the support of our generous donors and partners, Lynette and her family was given the gift of time… time together as a family to share their love and celebrate life, which she later said was the most precious and invaluable gift someone in her position could receive.  We followed up with Lyn a couple weeks after the trip to record a grant summary video and were overwhelmed by Lyn’s appreciation for the experience.  Unfortunately, just days after we recorded the video, Lyn’s health took another turn for the worse.  She fought hard and remained strong for her family but ultimately passed on in early May.  We know she is doing great things in the land beyond and we feel honored to have met her and to have played a small part in giving her and her family precious time together.  Watch the video to learn more about Lynette and their experience.

Eva Nye (Pictured in page header photo)

Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

St John Heals grant recipient

Summary: 

Eva was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer in October 2020.  Triple negative breast cancer is widely known as one of the toughest forms to treat.  To further complicate matters, Eva and her husband Eric also had the added challenge of navigating her health journey during the Covid-19 pandemic while working full time and parenting their two small children.  Although they have kept a positive attitude throughout the intense journey and have successfully come out the other end, the team at Concerts for Cancer believes that they deserve some time to decompress as a family and celebrate the end of this phase of their journey.  In October 2021, one year from diagnosis, on Erics 50th birthday and during breast cancer awareness month, their family will travel to the magical island of St John, USVI as the extremely deserving recipients of one of our Concerts for Cancer St John Heals grant.  We will post a grant summary video soon.