The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
KEYS aids children dealing with cancer
KEYS Program: Local outreach provides care packages to children dealing with cancer
SHERRILL » The KEYS Program is always all about the smiles, and there might not be a more important time of year to share the gift of a smile than the holiday season.
Once again this year, dozens of children facing cancer, either themselves or in their families, will soon be reminded there is an abundance of love for them. The Holiday Smiles Care Package outreach of the Sherrill-based KEYS Program, started five years ago, delivers care packages to kids all throughout the Central New York area who might be needing a little extra support during the holidays.
“This time of year is our busiest, and we have 129 kids to deliver presents and music to who have been impacted by cancer in some way. We saw a huge need for this for families, whether the children themselves had cancer or a sibling needed love,” KEYS co-founder Colleen Bennett said.
They started with a single family that had lost a child to cancer that first year, and now their care packages are delivered from Watertown to Waterville and as far away as Albany. There are 29 of the KEYSKids right here in the Vernon-Verona-Sherrill-Oneida area, she added.
The KEYS Elves deliver packages to their doorsteps, and like real elves they often slip away unseen to their next destination.
“The kids very rarely see us … we just drop them off and leave for the next one,” Bennett said. They also have care packages in the emergency rooms of several local hospitals, to help take away some of the stress on the kids having to visit those facilities, likely under less-than-joyful circumstances.
The main outreach of KEYS is the therapy of music, and each year there is a spe- cial KEYS Program CD filled with holiday songs. The newest CD features 22 Christmas songs, and is a truly heartfelt endeavor as that music -- mostly the enduring classics -- were all chosen by KEYS Kids themselves. Bennett said she expects some 500 copies of the CD to be given away for free this season, not only to the KEYS Kids but to anyone donating $25 or more to continue their outreach.
The KEYS Program is currently accepting donations of new, unwrapped toys to deliver in those care packages, Bennett added. Those donations canbe left at PRPlus Small Engine Repair, located at 308 Sherrill Road in Sherrill, from now until Dec. 16. There will be awrapping party to prepare the gifts Dec. 17 at St. Peter’s LutheranChurch in Verona from 1-3 p.m. Anyone interesting in joining the wrapping fun should call Cheri Schmalz at (315) 335-6312.
KEYS had a great day on Giving Tuesday of Nov. 28, Bennett noted. Not only did they raise more than $1,000 themselves, but that figurewas then doubled bymatching funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Bennett grewupinOneida butmovedbefore her senior year to graduate fromWater-
ville High School -- where she met her husband-tobe Dave Bennett -- in 1984. Her parents Charles and Mary Blair owned the Save More Super Duper onMain Street in Oneida in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and she worked there while in school.
She recalled taking saxophone and piano lessons during her school days, and studying piano at Marywood College in Scranton, where she worked with the Suzuki music program for children. Bennett also often visited Pennsylvania’s State School for the Deaf, where she saw how music could reach young people even with their hearing impairments.
Themusic speakers were placed on the floor, and the music cranked way up high in volume, she recalled. The students would lay on the floor and enjoy the music through the vibrations radiating through their bodies.
Bennett knows well the healing power of music. She sang by the bedside of her father in 1993 during his last days of his battle with cancer, soothing him when he couldn’t sleep. The first time she played her music for him he was asleep within an hour, and the doctors and nurses saw her own miraculous treatment that brought hima comfort that medicine couldn‘t, she recalled.
She also recorded some music for him, and that was also therapeutic to Bennet herself, as it gave her a constructive outlet for her own emotions while confronting her father’s disease.
Blair passed away at the age of 54, but from that tragic loss came the beginning of the KEYS Program. Bennett created KEYS -- an acronym for Kids Educational Youth Services -- with her husband the following year as a music outreach for child cancer patients. Today, the not-for-profit KEYS Program reaches more than 1,000 children in central New York who are impacted by cancer either themselves or in their families, and thousands more across the country.
“This year, with a grant from the American legion Child Welfare Fund, we created a Music Toolkit that we are delivering to over 250 children‘s hospitals to raise awareness of the benefits of music in the hospital seeing, while connecting pediatric patients to the KEYS Program‘s MusicHub and KEYS Kids Network,” Bennett said. “The Toolkits have carious songs, musical activities and resources for parents so they may easily incorporate music in their child‘s care and are geared to the needs of pediatric patients. The Toolkits connect kids to our new online KEYS Kids Network, where we broadcast a really neat, fun, zanymusical kids show and coffeehouse to the bedside of thousands of kids in children‘s hospitals near and far. Our goal is to help kids feel less isolated and alone, while lifting their spirits through musical fun and lots of smiles.”
Although the KEYS Pro- gram was prompted by the death of her father, Bennett said she feels he would like the way she has paid tribute to himby reaching out to so many children in need.
“This started with a really sad and melancholy day that has now ended on a happy note,” Bennett explained. “I think my dad would want that.”
For more information on KEYS, to make a donation, or to volunteer, call (315) 363- 6446 or visit: www. thekeysprogram.org