BAINBRIDGE – A Bainbridge woman and her two daughters will be cutting off their hair in support of a local women with cancer, and they are challenging others to do the same.
Robin Haddad and her daughters, Gina and Valerie, plan to chop off at least 8 inches of their lovely brunette locks for Pantene’s Beautiful Lengths, a charitable initiative looking to gather a million inches of hair to make natural wigs for women who have lost their hair due to cancer treatments.
The wigs, which Haddad explained take 4 to 6 months and 6 ponytails worth of hair to make, are made available to women who need them through a collaboration between the Entertainment Industry Foundation and the American Cancer Society.
Haddad and her girls were planning to donate their hair in January to another, similar cause. But they changed their focus when they learned that Theresa Davis, Gina Haddad’s teacher at Greenlawn Elementary School, had been recently diagnosed with Stage 2 non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
“We knew we had to do something different,” Haddad said. The mom looked to the internet, navigating through information on a number of charitable organizations before she came upon the Pantene Beautiful Lengths website. She was impressed by what she saw on the site, particularly the online blogs and pictures.
Suddenly, Haddad stopped thinking of this as a small, family effort and started thinking on a larger scale. And her idea to ask others if they had 8 inches of Hair to Spare, was born.
“I sat back and thought about that for a few minutes and said, I can do this,” explained Haddad, of her plan to ask others in the community to donate their hair as well. “I asked a couple of people what they thought about my idea. They thought it was great.”
But the Haddad’s wanted to personalize the program. They wanted to dedicate their efforts in honor of Davis, so they asked the teacher and her family for permission to do so.
Davis said she was “surprised and humbled at the thought of their generosity,” when approached about the idea.
“We have felt extremely supported by the community, and this effort from Robin and the girls just re-affirmed what a wonderful and caring community we live and work in,” she said.
Davis has just finished her fifth round of chemotherapy. She has one more to go before her progress will be reevaluated next month. Both she and her husband Paul teach in the Bainbridge-Guilford school district.
The Haddads have selected Valentine’s Day as the “cut off,” and enlisted four area hairstyles to do the work.
Alice Lieb and Katrina Bell of Bainbridge, Cindy Strauss of Otego and Jessie Hogancamp of Nineveh have all volunteered their services for the Hair to Spare event, which will be held from 9 a.m. to noon on Feb. 14 at Greenlawn Elementary School in Bainbridge.
