Mendham High School Junior Raises over $1000 for Ovarian Cancer Research

While most of the women of her family were planning another outrageously sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner, while also keeping up with work, kids’ sports, and every other regular job under the sun, Lily Hodge (MENDHAM) had gone undercover.

The Mendham High School curriculum includes building philanthropic values in the eleventh grade. Lily participated in a bake sale fundraiser for the local EMS as her assignment. After baking for a few days, the project also entailed negotiating a table placement with a local bagel shop (Three cheers to Mendham Bagels!) and then engaging with passersby who vastly prefer to ignore solicitation. But they prevailed and raised a mighty sum.

Lily has excellent organizational skills and wanted to do more. You see, she’s grown up surrounded by healthcare professionals as well as severe disease. Her mother has fought breast cancer twice, and her grandmother, Jane Rubin (MORRISTOWN), had both breast and ovarian cancers – all linked to a BRCA1 genetic mutation. In 2010, she launched the Mathilda Fund, named after Rubin’s grandmother, to support the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance. Although “Mathilda” has her own front-facing account, every dollar raised passes through a back door into the OCRA. Over the years, Lily has watched many family and friends make contributions to this fund. Today, it has raised over $83,000.

Lily decided, without telling anyone in her family, to arrange her own fundraiser: another bake sale, outside on the freezing sidewalk in front of the same bagel shop (MENDHAM BAGELS). Bless their sweet bagels. Her younger cousin, Ava Johnson (RANDOLPH), a 7th grader and avid cookie baker, joined in. They baked for hours to produce enough product. Lily set up shop the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Long story short, in three hours, they sold out of cookies, cupcakes, and brownies, raising $1025! They engaged customers by sharing their grandmother’s sixteen-year treatment and writing journey, her decision to write historical fiction, exploring cancer treatments from 1880 onward, hope, and their concern for women facing breast and ovarian cancer today—such big, heavy topics for girls on the cusp of womanhood.

Thank you, Mendham High School, for making the spirit of philanthropy resonate with teens; Mendham Bagel, for your participation; and these two young ladies, Lily and Ava, for their dedication to a vital cause.