Dear Family and Friends,

Writing to you today brings me great joy. There is lots of good news to report. 

As you know, we established an endowment in Elizabeth’s memory at Dana-Farber in 2012, the year she died. The grand plan, at the time, was to create a living memorial, a legacy that would help develop improved early detection and new strategies and treatment protocols for future generations of women and their families.  The original idea was to establish the fund with involvement from Scott and Duncan with an eye toward their carrying the work forward throughout their lives. Their mother would like that, I know.

Original funding came from a generous influx of memorial gifts, which gratefully continue to arrive today. In addition, we worked with the Pan Mass Challenge staff to establish Team Elizabeth, an original group of three riders in 2013, with all gifts to team members deposited into the Elizabeth Alling Sewall Endowment.

This year Team Elizabeth grew to 21 riders made up of multi-generations with the bulk of the new riders representing the twenty-something set.  Each one of these young professionals committed to a multi-thousand dollar minimum and set aside the time to solicit gifts and train for the challenging ride.  New this year, there were also two team fundraisers, one in Brooklyn and one in Chicago.

The result: Team Elizabeth raised more the $90,000 this year, almost double what we raised last year. In addition, Elizabeth’s endowment will receive another generous transfer this year of $20,000 from the PMC proceeds of Dr. Eric Winer, Chief of the Division of Women’s Cancers and Director of the Breast Oncology Center at Dana-Farber, who many of you will recall was Elizabeth’s doctor.  This brings our total to more than $110,000 raised thus far this year, pushing the endowment’s grand total to well beyond $600,000 AND we still have the rest of 2017 to receive and credit gifts. 

Special thanks go out to Laura Canning and Chris Sweitzer for organizing the fundraising events in Brooklyn and Chicago and to Donnie and Kathy Dwyer, parents of Tom Dwyer, 3-year riding veteran and classmate of Scott’s from Trinity, for hosting the wrap-up party.

To the broader Team Elizabeth community of donors, workers and riders, thank you. Today, the Elizabeth Alling Sewall Endowment Fund is established and growing at an accelerated pace thanks to the hard work and generous gifts you have provided.

With profound gratitude,

Gordon Sewall, Team Elizabeth Captain Emeritus