Board Members and Support Needed for Local Cancer Foundation

Tonya Bridges

Tonya’s Hope Cancer Foundation, based in Lanark Village on the eastern outskirt of the City of Carrabelle is in search of volunteers from the Apalachicola area to serve on the Foundation’s board of directors.

The foundation is a 501(c)(3) public charity that provides financial assistance to applicants that have been diagnosed with cancer. Financial assistance is limited to payments for utilities, housecleaning, rent/mortgages, childcare, and gasoline as a means to relieve some of the stress and demands of everyday life as a direct result of the illness.

The foundation was established after Tonya Bridges, a young Lanark Village woman was in distress with cancer in 2007 and needed assistance paying bills due to the illness that eventually took her life.

After the news of Tonya’s situation spread throughout the Lanark Village community, Kathy Ingersoll and other members of the American Legion Auxiliary Unit 82 hosted a yard sale and pig roast combined as a means to raise funds to provide the financial assistance Bridges needed.

During Tonya’s final months, Ingersoll asked for permission from both Bridges and her mother to continue using her name and image to benefit other residents of Lanark Village diagnosed with cancer. Permission was granted and that initial yard sale and pig roast became an annual event.

With a desire to help cancer patients throughout the Franklin County community, in 2010 Ingersoll went before the Franklin County Board of County Commissioners and requested the commission declare the first Saturday in April of each year Tonya’s Hope Day. The commission did, and now cancer patients from Alligator Point to Apalachicola have since benefitted from the foundations generosity.

However, funding to assist cancer patients throughout Franklin County is running extremely low this year and judging from the past, proceeds from the annual yard sale might not be enough to help. As a result, financial support is needed from the at-large Franklin County community, in addition to participation at the annual yard sale event scheduled for April 2, 2016. Your support will help the Foundation help others.

For more information or questions please contact Kathy Ingersoll directly, at (850) 625-0382.