Berkley High grad rallies kite-makers to fight cancer
Auctions through February to benefit Cleveland Clinic research
When Berkley High School graduate and former Huntington Woods resident Phil Broder learned his sister had terminal lung cancer his mind turned to kites.
“Whenever I’ve had bad times in my life I’ve always turned to kites,” said Broder, 52, now a Pennsylvania resident and an award-winning kite-maker. “Mostly it’s just going out and flying them that puts me around other kite flyers — it gets you out of your own head.”
Broder has called on some of the world’s best kite-makers in his effort to battle cancer with funding. He set up a KitesFightingCancer.com website and a Facebook page and is auctioning off dozens of kites from around the world through all of February.
The motto for the effort is: “Making kites won’t cure cancer. But it can help research fly.”
Close to 50 kite-makers from the U.S., England, Germany, Italy, and Israel to Australia, Brazil, Columbia and other countries are donating kites they’ve made to be auctioned off.
The goal is to raise $30,000 for cancer research at the Cleveland Clinic where Broder’s sister, Rebecca Broder Egolf, 48, was treated.
Egolf, 48, is a 1990 Berkley High School graduate. She now lives in Solon, Ohio with her husband and two sons.
Egolf was still in high school when she was first treated for Hodgkin’s disease. Her treatment involved a lot of radiation.
“It worked, but radiation leads to other cancers down the road,” Broder said. “In October my sister got her terminal diagnosis after more than a year of lung cancer treatment.”
A former environment educator, Broder owns Fly Market Kitemaking Supply.
“A kite is a work of art,” Broder said.
The kites being auctioned are not made or priced for children. Some of the kite-maker donors have had gallery shows with their work.
“They’re making works of flying art, some of them 50 feet long,” Broder said.
Kite-makers donating their work were asked to create kites that are outside of their usual style so that each one is original.
Most of the kites being sold are priced between $500 to $1,500
“They are not being stitched together in a factory in China,” Broder said. “These are all handmade by an artist.”
Those who can’t buy a kite in the auction are encouraged to make a donation to The Gathering Place, a support organization for cancer victims and their families offered through the Cleveland Clinic.
Broder’s parents both died of lymphoma in 2017.
“They died 90 days apart,” he said. “It was kind of a gut punch.”
Doctors have said there is nothing else they can do for Broder’s sister now that her disease is at the end stage.
Still, her pending mortality moved Broder to use his passion for kites to try and help others.
“My sister is going to die,” he said. “I can sit back and watch it happen or I can try to stay occupied and do something.”