By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
If those who contribute to a cause without seeking acknowledgment are unsung heroes, then the dining room at the Greenacres Country Club was filled with them on Friday.
About 80 women — mostly members of HomeFront’s Women’s Initiative — turned out to hear Princeton resident John Crowley speak of his family’s efforts to save the lives of their two young children.
HomeFront, based in Lawrence, is a nonprofit agency that helps homeless and working poor families. The goal of the Women’s Initiative is to reach 1,000 members who each donate $100. The money will help fund HomeFront’s efforts to fight homelessness. Participants receive invitations to HomeFront’s speaker series and special local events.
Mr. Crowley, who was the featured speaker at the Women’s Initiative breakfast, spoke of the unsung heroes and the circular nature of giving that he experienced as a child, and that his family experienced after the births of the two youngest of their three children.
Megan and Patrick Crowley, who are now young teenagers, both have Pompe disease, which is a rare form of muscular dystrophy. They both attend the John Witherspoon Middle School in Princeton. The Crowleys’ oldest son, John Crowley, Jr., also attends the middle school.
Mr. Crowley’s first brush with unsung heroes and the circular nature of giving occurred shortly after his father — an Englewood police officer — died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning in his patrol car. Mr. Crowley and his brother, Joe, were 7 and 4, respectively, when their father died.
A few weeks after his father died, Mr. Crowley said, some family members took he and his brother to a bar. On the bar was a glass jar half filled with coins and bills, with a photograph of himself and his younger brother.
There was a message on the jar — “Help the Crowley children.” When he asked his uncle about it, his uncle said the purpose was to help him and Joe. Mr. Crowley said he did not think they needed help, because they lived in an apartment and they had plenty of food, clothing and toys.
“(But) it struck me that it was nice that people would want to step up and help,” he said.
That lesson was brought home again more than two decades later as Mr. Crowley and his wife, Aileen, fought to find medicine and treatments for Megan and Patrick.
Life was humming along nicely for the Crowley family. Mr. Crowley had earned a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University, and had just begun a new job when he and his wife learned that 15-month-old Megan had Pompe disease and that it was likely that newborn Patrick would have it, too.
The Crowleys were told that there was very little that could be done for the children. But they soon found a couple of physicians who were conducting research into Pompe disease, so “we had a little bit of hope,” he said.
In the meantime, the Crowley family set out to raise money for research into Pompe disease, with the goal of raising $1 million in the first year.
Friends contributed money, as well as a group of Bergen County schoolchildren, who donated $200 they had raised through a bake sale. An older woman whose late daughter had muscular dystrophy sent a check for $2, which she wrote was all that she could spare. She continued to donate $2 per month.
The Crowleys had raised $250,000, which was half of a smaller goal of raising $500,000 to fund the first piece of research. Mr. Crowley said he approached a philanthropist, hoping to raise more money. After listening to the request and the reasoning behind it, the philanthropist’s daughter — who was representing her father — wrote a check for $250,000.
Through his daughter, the philanthropist — whose name has never been revealed — told the Crowleys that he did not want credit for the donation. That was a great lesson, Mr. Crowley said. Some people donate because they want others to think better of them, he said.
“But it’s not like that in this room,” Mr. Crowley told the women Friday morning. “Each of you is an unsung hero.”
Mr. Crowley also spoke of the kindness of strangers, and the impact of those actions on other people.
The Crowley family traveled to New York City several years ago to watch the annual Thanksgiving Day parade, he said. They stayed at the Plaza Hotel, and when it was time for the parade to begin, they walked outside — into a wall of people.
Mr. Crowley approached a New York City police lieutenant and asked whether it would be possible to move the barricades so the children — Megan and Patrick, who use wheelchairs, and John Jr. — could watch the parade.
The lieutenant was on the verge of saying no, Mr. Crowley said, when he thought better of it. He saw the two children in the wheelchairs and, with the help of two patrol officers, made a path through the crowd for the family.
“He put us on the street, so close that we could literally touch the floats,” Mr. Crowley said. “It was the most perfect, surreal moment. I couldn’t do it alone. I thanked the lieutenant, and he said, ‘No, thank you.’”
“It is a moment that always stuck with me,” Mr. Crowley said. “It’s the circular nature of giving. He was doing things that he felt were right in his heart. We made a difference in his heart. You can make a difference.”
Coming full circle, Mr. Crowley emphasized finding passion in one’s life. HomeFront has done much to help so many people that it is an inspiration in its own right, he said.
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