Ohio State student Lisa Milner has raised more than $1,000 each month since her mother passed away last December.
On Dec. 9, 2004, Barb Friedman, Milner’s mother, died of peritoneal cancer – cancer of the abdomen – after being diagnosed on August 1, 2003. The loss motivated Lisa to use her grief for a positive purpose.
“I never thought I could do anything big, ever,” said Milner, a sophomore in pre-communication.
After her mother passed away during finals week of winter quarter, Milner said she decided to put a yellow Lance Armstrong “LIVESTRONG” bracelet with the handwritten word “you” in front of the slogan. The bracelet that was placed in her mother’s casket now reads “You LIVESTRONG.”
At that point she thought of buying bracelets similar to the popular Armstrong bracelets, in purple. She invisioned the inscription would read “She Lived Strong” and they would be sold to raise money for peritoneal cancer.
Her boyfriend, OSU student Jeremy Goldberg, helped her pursue the idea by looking online at places that make similar bracelets and finding out how much they would cost to buy.
“We spent hours on the Internet looking up costs and companies to find the cheapest ways to make bracelets,” said Goldberg, a sophomore in international studies.
They started off buying 5,000 bracelets at a cost of $3,000, he said.
Milner announced at the funeral that they were going to be selling the bracelets and that anyone who wanted to purchase one could put money in an envelope and the Milner family would send them out, she said.
At the funeral they made $1,500 dollars, and in the past five months they have made more than $7,000, she said. Each bracelet comes with a suggested price of $3, but people have donated up to $100 for a bracelet, Milner said.
“I am getting through it by raising the money,” Milner said. “It is like (Friedman) is living on through the bracelets.”
Her father, Ernie Milner, has worked with her on the project. He works as a podiatrist outside of Lorain, Ohio, and sells the bracelets out of his office.
He said he likes raising the money because “it makes you focus on something other than the grief.”
Selling the bracelets helps friends and family not only remember Friedman and the giving person she was, but also raises money to help with research, he said.
“This type of fund raiser would have been right up her alley,” Ernie said. “She was always trying to help people.”
The effects of the bracelet have reached across the country. The Milners have family in California, and one of their family members saw someone walking down the street wearing their purple bracelet, Lisa said.
Neither Ernie nor Lisa know how far this is going to go, but they both say they will continue to sell the bracelets as long as people are interested, they said. They are currently researching where the best place would be to donate the money.
“We want to give all the money to a research lab that researches this particular type of cancer,” Lisa said. “We have created a fund, but have not actually given the money away yet.”
“I always have some to sell, or I can always sell the one off my wrist,” Goldberg said.
Lisa lives strong each day by remembering her mom and raising money so that others will not have to go through what she has had to endure, she said.
“Without the bracelets I wouldn’t be able to handle it,” she said. “I don’t know how people get through it. I hope that other people can find a positive way to deal with their loses.”
