Bald for a Cause

In April 1999, I was living and working in Washington, DC. One day, my birthday actually, some college friends were visiting me. It was “NATO Day” in Washington and most of downtown was shutdown for security reasons, so we went out to Annapolis, Maryland. We were touring around having a great time and decided to pop into a little souvenir shop.

While browsing around, I see a guy who totally looked like one of the camp counselors from my music camp days at Concordia College in Ann Arbor. But seriously, I think I see people everywhere (just look at what I named my blog for goodness sakes!) and it had been at least 10 years!

But I just couldn’t let it go….”Ummm….excuse me, but is your name Bill? Ummm….were you counselor at Concordia Music Camp?”

Dude. It was him! Not kidding. He was in the seminary training to be a Lutheran pastor and was sorta doing an internship with a congregation in Washington, DC. We had brunch a couple weeks later in Washington and have kept in touch via email ever since.

Bill….Pastor Wrede….works for a congregation in New York City now. In fact, God used Bill during the events of September 11th to comfort and minister to the hurting.

Recently, Bill ran into some friends from the New York Police Department (NYPD) 19 Precinct. Some of these guys were the NYPD officers he served with at Ground Zero as chaplain. They invited him to participate in a special fundraising event for St. Baldrick’s, the world's largest volunteer-driven fundraising event for childhood cancer research. Thousands of volunteers shave their heads in solidarity of children with cancer, while requesting donations of support from friends and family.

Yesterday, Bill had his head shaved. Take a look at the before and after pics below. Love it! Worth every penny--to help the kids....and to see him bald!