Eleven years ago, the Emerald Eve was held in a living room, a night for family and friends of Donna Crandall to gather and celebrate her life.
Now, Emerald Eve is an annual event that draws some 350 guests and is held at the Canfield Casino in Saratoga Springs. It’s still a night to remember Donna, of Scotia, but it also has raised more than $1.2 million for the Donna M. Crandall Memorial Foundation.
“One of the really amazing things is that a lot of the people that were there at the first Emerald Eve have been at all the Emerald Eves,” said David Crandall, Donna’s husband. “I think it’s a tribute to Donna, to the family and most importantly it’s a tribute to the patients. … It’s really compelling that people want to reach out and try to make a difference.”
This year’s Emerald Eve is Saturday, Nov. 19, from 7 to 11 p.m.
The Crandall family created the foundation in 2000 after Donna’s death at age 41 from cystic fibrosis. Its mission is to provide support to people with CF and their families.
“The first thing we were able to do at the foundation was try to make people’s lives a little more normal or take their minds off dealing with the disease,” said Crandall.
Cystic fibrosis is an inherited chronic disease that affects the lungs and digestive systems of about 30,000 children and adults in the U.S., according to information from the foundation. A defective gene causes the body to produce unusually thick sticky mucus that clogs the lungs and pancreas, leading to life-threatening lung infections and preventing natural pancreatic enzymes from helping the body break down and absorb food.
The foundation recently handed out gift bags to patients in the hospital. They were filled with everything from candy, games, music players and Kindles to soft toilet paper and tissues, parking passes for family members and vouchers for the cafeteria so patients could treat themselves to better food. The foundation would also pay for the patient’s telephone and television in the hospital room.
“They just kind of get some comforts from home and get some things that make it nicer for them and they don’t have to worry about costs,” said Crandall.
The foundation also redid the patient waiting area in the adult CF area of Albany Medical Center to make it more homey.
“They can go to that area and there’s really nice furniture, a beautiful desk, TV cabinets, TVs, a Wii hooked up,” said Crandall. “It’s kind of a living room you might have at home.”
Crandall knows the financial stress that dealing with CF can place on a family. The foundation can help ease that burden, too.
“It’s a very expensive disease so you can easily spend, in a couple years, hundreds of thousands trying to deal with [it],” said Crandall. “We provide money to pay car loans, insurance premiums, really anything that people need so they can deal with this as effectively as they can.”
That type of charitable handout can prevent families from facing the difficult decision of money or health.
“The worst thing is some families saying, ‘Should we buy the medicine that we need or go to the doctor appointment or pay our mortgage’ and … we’re trying to not put them in that situation,” said Crandall.
The Donna M. Crandall Foundation has grown beyond Crandall’s expectations, having just doled out its 1,000th gift bag. Donna would have been proud, said Crandall.
“She’d be really happy that we’re able to help people and make a difference for people,” said Crandall. “People who never knew Donna know of her and know the kind of person she was, so I think she would have been happy about that.”
There’s one thing Donna might not have been so pleased about, though.
“We laugh about this because I think she probably would not have been excited that we’re using her name because she always just wanted to be a regular person,” said Crandall. “She went to work three days before she passed away … with an IV drip in her arm. She didn’t want that kind of recognition.”
The foundation has been a “labor of love” for the entire family—aunts, uncles, cousins, children—and this year, 11-year-old cousins Ben Crandall and Jack Cheney will get to help out in a familial rite of passage.
“It’s just finally getting to realize all the stories that my sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, parents talked about all these years and just finally live them,” said Jack, of Loudonville.
Cheney has spent his whole life watching family members get dressed up and party at Emerald Eve, but this year he’s finally old enough to get a piece of the action.
“It’s just a celebration for all of the work we’ve done throughout the years and all the money and people’s lives we’ve touched,” said Cheney.
Ben Crandall, of Saratoga Springs, is also looking forward to surrounding himself with family on Nov. 19.
“We raise money and stuff and at the event we have a silent auction, sell raffle tickets and at the end watch the video we made,” said Ben Crandall.
Cheney and his cousin are “inseparable” and appeared in a video to promote the foundation, educate about CF and introduce guests to Donna.
“It was a video of people with CF explaining what it was and me and my cousin telling about who Aunt Donna was,” said Ben Crandall.
They never met their Aunt Donna but they feel like they know her, said Cheney.
“I think she would have loved it and been so proud of all of us,” said Cheney. “I just want to follow in my family’s footsteps and try to make Aunt Donna happy.”
Tickets are $120 per person and can be purchased by contacting Lisa Cheney at 453-6369.
Emerald Eve will include a cocktail hour featuring a raw bar and passed hors d’oeuvres, carving stations, silent and live auctions and live musical entertainment. For more information about the foundation visit www.donnacrandallfoundation.org.
