WEST PITTSTON — If you’ve traveled in and around Greater Pittston lately, especially over the Firefighters Memorial Bridge, you’ve seen plenty of gold ribbons adorning the bridge connecting Pittston and West Pittston.
Being high school football is underway, many surmise the gold-colored ribbon is in support of Wyoming Area whose school colors are gold, green and white.
What the gold color actually represents is the acknowledgement of September being Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. It’s a time to recognize children and their families affected by childhood cancers in an effort to support research to fight cancer in children.
Little Eric’s Foundation (LEF) is responsible for putting up the ribbons at various locations to bring the unspoken cancer to the forefront.
Eric, known as “Little E,” is the late Eric Speicher Jr., who, at the age of 14, lost a 30-month battle with brain cancer on Dec. 23, 2013. He was a Middle School student at Wyoming Area at the time of his passing.
Eric and Jessica Speicher, Little E’s parents, created a foundation in Eric Jr.’s name in May 2014, dedicated to funding pediatric brain and childhood cancer research in May 2014.
“We do a donation to Sloan-Kettering to researchers and we donate to local families with kids undergoing cancer treatments,” Eric Sr. said. “We’re more grassroots; we stay local and, unfortunately, there’s more than enough kids that are having issues locally.”
To date, LEF has donated approximately $180,000 to research and $18,000 to local families.
According to Speicher, the foundation is expanding with a branch of LEF in Ohio.
“Through family that we have out there (Ohio), they started a chapter of LEF and they put on a day-long music fest,” Speicher said. “They became board members and we have a full board member in Ohio. We actually donated to a family in Ohio.”
The Speicher family, including sons Chase, 12, and Greyson, 3, has extended family involved in the foundation, including Jessica’s mother Rosalie Cullagh.
“We use Facebook, our website, local newspapers, including friends and family to get the word out about the foundation and childhood cancer,” Cullagh said. “Wyoming Area has been wonderful to the foundation; they’re fabulous.”
LEF held its annual lantern launch Aug. 29 at the West Pittston Little League where Little E played baseball.
“We are doing this lantern launch; we’ve done it before, but the numbers are getting smaller because the kids are at baseball and soccer,” Cullagh said. “It’s hard to get more people involved.”
The next fundraiser, a casino night, for LEF is Little Eric’s Game Night: Play for a Cure on Sept. 28 at the Holiday Inn Wilkes-Barre – East Mountain from 6 to 11 p.m.
You may purchase casino night tickets, find out more about childhood cancer or even learn more about Little Eric’s journey, go to LEF’s website at: littleericsfoundation.org.
