Posted 2:13 am Saturday, January 19, 2008
Benefit For Frankston Boy Raises $4,000
More than $4,000 was raised at a benefit concert Saturday for Taylor Kirkpatrick, the 12-year-old Frankston boy suffering from Langerhan's Cell Histiocytosis, a rare blood disease. The money will go toward the therapy sessions and medical needs essential to Taylor staying alive.
"I'm a happy woman today," Ms. Kirkpatrick told the Tyler Morning Telegraph on Thursday. "This is such a tremendous blessing for Taylor. Thank you to everybody."
In the past eight months, an even rarer relapse of the disease into Taylor's central nervous system has confined him to a motorized wheelchair. His sixth-grade class at Frankston Middle School helped raise money for the wheelchair.
Expensive weekly treatments and trips to Houston, where the only physician in Texas who treats LCH is located, has drained the family's budget. Ms. Kirkpatrick is a single mother who works at Brookshire Grocery Company.
The concert, held at First Baptist Church of Frankston, featured The Hubbard Family of Tyler and the Hendrix Trio of Texarkana. The headliner for the event was Gospel singer Sharon Kay King of Indiana, who organized the benefit and had never seen Taylor, but had heard about his plight at a Gospel singers convention in Kentucky last summer.
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"I just had to do something for him," she said with a smile after the concert and declining an interview. "This was Taylor's day. It's not about us (the singers)."
A fund has been set up at Southside Bank for Taylor. Make checks payable to Southside with a designation at the bottom for the Taylor Kirkpatrick Fund. Send donations to P.O. Box 804, Frankston, 75763.
