For 2 years, grief left her physique feeling like a pressure-cooker.
“It wasn’t till my junior yr that I found one thing that actually helped with the discharge of my feelings,” mentioned Brooke Stanford ’25, who misplaced her mom, Andrea, to pancreatic most cancers two weeks earlier than arriving on campus as a first-year in 2021.
“The one factor that actually helped was operating.”
Now Stanford is utilizing the game to honor her mom and elevate different households going through the illness. She’s been coaching for this yr’s Boston Marathon whereas soliciting donations for Challenge Purple, a nonprofit devoted to preventing pancreatic most cancers and supporting sufferers. Yearly, the Boston Athletic Affiliation companions with a set of charities, which in flip recruit marathoners to boost cash forward of race day.
Stanford received’t be the one School runner hitting the 26.2-mile course for a liked one on April 21. Every of those college students is vying for a powerful end — and a fundraising haul for a trigger near the center.
‘I used to be simply so excited I received to do that’
Stanford found Challenge Purple final summer season whereas shopping a listing of accepted charities for the marathon.
“I knew I’d wish to run for some kind of most cancers analysis group, however I didn’t assume that there can be one so becoming to what I had been via,” she mentioned. “After that, I made it my No. 1 mission to get a spot on the Challenge Purple workforce.”
The difficulty was, the percentages had been on par with entering into Harvard.
“I had just below 150 functions for 5 spots,” mentioned Challenge Purple program director Vin Kampf.
Stanford, a Dunster Home resident and utilized math concentrator, quickly discovered herself swept into telephone calls and interviews with Kampf and the nonprofit’s different prime brass.
“You’ll assume I used to be making use of for a job at an funding financial institution,” she mentioned. “Lots of people assume the toughest half about operating for a charity is elevating the cash. However the hardest half is one hundred pc getting a spot on the workforce.”
The ultimate step was a proper presentation of her fundraising plans to Challenge Purple final fall. “I spent a full week placing collectively this very detailed PowerPoint and Excel,” recalled Stanford, who vowed to boost $50,000 by soliciting particular person donations and internet hosting particular occasions. “I spent manner longer doing that than on any task Harvard has ever given me.”
Every week later, she obtained the excellent news in a tearful name with Kampf. “I used to be simply so excited that I received to do that — and do it for my mother,” she mentioned.
The primary-time marathoner, who dons purple leggings for each coaching run, has continued giving it her all. She surpassed her $50,000 pledge almost two months in the past and at present ranks within the High 10 of Boston Marathon fundraisers this yr. Based on Kampf, she additionally ranks amongst Challenge Purple’s most profitable charity runners ever.
“In some methods, I really feel like I discovered my life’s objective,” Stanford mentioned. “I wish to work extra with Challenge Purple. I wish to do extra to make a distinction. I wish to assist finish pancreatic most cancers.”
‘Simply think about if this was the Boston Marathon’
At first, Grace Taylor ’25 didn’t inform her pals about her most cancers prognosis. She was too busy working as a peer adviser for incoming first-years.
“I wished to be the very best peer adviser I might be,” mentioned Taylor, a rising sophomore on the time. “I knew that if I let my very own stuff in, I wouldn’t have the ability to serve the entryway very effectively.”
When she texted her pal Andrew Athanasian ’25 a number of days later, he too was a bit occupied.
“I used to be strolling throughout the river to go work out when Grace texted, ‘Hey, can we discuss?’” Athanasian recalled. “I used to be like, ‘Is it essential?’ And he or she replied, ‘No, not likely.’”
“I didn’t wish to distract the exercise!” cracked Taylor, a Crimson lacrosse participant.
Taylor broke the information later that day. Athanasian instantly stepped up, turning into a pillar throughout his pal’s therapy for an aggressive type of thyroid most cancers. Not least, he and Taylor’s Quincy Home roommate, Amy Wotovich, made numerous runs to BerryLine for (amongst different issues) throat-soothing ice cream. With the assistance of them and her mother and father, Taylor mentioned, she persevered with out dropping out for the semester.
Athanasian, an econ concentrator who lives in Lowell Home, joined Taylor and her household final fall on the Mass Basic Brigham Eversource Most cancers 5k, a profit for the oncology follow that noticed Taylor via two surgical procedures and radioactive iodine therapy.
“Seeing how Grace and her household responded to that 5k,” Athanasian recalled, “I discovered myself saying: ‘Simply think about if this was the Boston Marathon.’”
After nabbing a spot on the Mass Basic Marathon Group, the first-time marathoner has made that imaginative and prescient a actuality. Athanasian goals to boost $10,000 for the hospital’s pediatric oncology unit, with a part of the proceeds earmarked for the adolescents and younger adults most cancers program that noticed Taylor via therapy into remission.
“I’m operating for Grace however I’m additionally operating for everybody who didn’t make it,” emphasised Athanasian, remembering a pal from his Lengthy Island hometown killed by mind most cancers at age 17. Athanasian, a dedicated Catholic, has inscribed his Asics with references to scripture as a reminder of his inspiration. (Hebrews 12:1, on his proper, feels tailored for the trendy charity runner.)
On race day, Taylor hopes to glimpse her pal from the celebration hosted by Mass Basic, a long-standing fixture at Mile 20 — simply earlier than the course crests Heartbreak Hill.
“That’s the darkest a part of the course,” Athanasian mentioned. “However they’re bringing out all of the pediatric oncology sufferers to cheer us on. How are you going to not turn out to be Usain Bolt after seeing these children?”
‘The chance to name upon her power’
Each Sunday, Cohasset, Mass., native Bridget Kondrat ’26 would attend Mass along with her massive prolonged household. Then everybody would head over to her grandparents’ place and spend the day collectively.
“We’ve all the time been so shut,” mentioned Kondrat, who counts three siblings and 18 cousins. “And my Nana was actually the center of that.”
For 14 years, Kondrat’s maternal grandmother, Cleida Buckley, fought a number of myeloma with the assistance of Dana-Farber Most cancers Institute. By all of it, the 5-foot-2 powerhouse maintained her standing because the household’s hostess and connector.
“She simply stored exhibiting up for us,” Kondrat mentioned.
Watching the marathon turned one other household custom after Kondrat’s mother, Liz, ran in 2000, and Buckley proved a memorable presence from her perch on Heartbreak Hill.
“She was so freaking cute, simply sitting there in Newton Centre along with her little seashore chair,” Liz mentioned.
That’s why coaching for the 2025 occasion with the Dana-Farber Marathon Problem workforce struck Kondrat as the right option to honor her grandmother, who died in 2022.
“Operating with Dana-Farber provides me the chance to name upon her power,” mentioned Kondrat, who hopes to boost $10,000.
The Harvard-Radcliffe rower and Eliot Home resident has formidable objectives for her second marathon. Charity runners can run Boston with out assembly the race’s strict qualifying occasions. However the economics concentrator hopes to finest the occasion’s official 3 hour and 25-minute cutoff (with a mean tempo of seven:49 per mile) for ladies ages 34 and youthful.
Kondrat, who began operating along with her mother in fourth grade, has been following an formidable coaching program full with pace exercises, intervals, and lengthy runs at her goal marathon tempo.
“I biked subsequent to her final week when she ran 12 miles,” Liz mentioned. “She was doing 7:30s the entire time!”
Maintaining the routine has been a problem for a full-time student-athlete and part-time fundraiser, Kondrat mentioned. However it’s nothing in contrast with the marathon battle Buckley endured.
“Every time I begin to complain or lose motivation,” Kondrat mentioned, “I simply take into consideration the whole lot I watched my Nana undergo.”
‘She began exhibiting me her medals’
In seventh grade, Maggie Chiappetta-Uberti ’26 got here residence feeling discouraged after her first observe follow. She was exhausted. She was sore. All she wished to do was stop.
“My mother Lainee sat me down and instantly began instilling me with confidence,” Chiappetta-Uberti recalled. “She began telling me concerning the data she set in center college and highschool. She began exhibiting me her medals.”
That impressed Chiapetta-Uberti to keep it up. “I’m so grateful to her for pushing me to proceed,” mentioned the Kirkland Home resident, who competed in cross-country and observe via highschool.
Her mother, Lainee Uberti, was identified with early onset Alzheimer’s at 58. “She instantly began strolling 4 miles each day,” recalled Chiappetta-Uberti, who was in ninth grade on the time.
Greater than six years later, Uberti remains to be non secular about her day by day jaunt. “Getting on the market and operating or strolling,” she mentioned in an interview, “that’s what retains us going.”
As soon as once more, that power has impressed her daughter to sort out a giant problem. Chiappetta-Uberti is coaching for her first marathon whereas elevating funds for the Alzheimer’s Affiliation. Every member of Group Finish ALZ is meant to usher in a minimal of $10,000. However the neuroscience concentrator set the loftier objective of $26,200 — or $1,000 per mile.
As a part of her efforts, she’s additionally populating a TikTok feed with coaching movies, Alzheimer’s consciousness, and tributes to Uberti.
“It’s so particular that Maggie goes the additional mile — no pun supposed — to boost consciousness, elevate cash, and put her coronary heart into representing our household,” mentioned Chiappetta-Uberti’s different mother, Laura Chiappetta. Each mother and father will journey from their residence in Los Angeles to cheer their daughter’s 26.2-mile debut.
The punishing race appears like an acceptable gesture when her mother is coping with an incurable illness like Alzheimer’s, Chiappetta-Uberti mentioned. “I would like her to know there’s help for her — she’s not going through this alone.”
