Retailer making a big difference
With Bring Your Own Bag campaign, Kutztown record shop helps teen athletes Niki Nolte and Anthony Myers battle cancer.
Like a lot of retailers, Young Ones Record Store in Kutztown encourages customers to reuse bags or go without as a way to reduce their carbon footprints. But the record store, which set up in the borough 29 years ago, took the effort one step further recently by starting the BYOB (Bring Your Own Bag) for Charity campaign.
By declining a plastic bag, a customer can choose to donate the 6-cent cost to one of two selected charities. Porter Holt, son of owner Chris Holt and the store’s assistant manager, said many customers dig into their own pockets, giving $1, $10, even $20 to the causes.
“Our customers are really good with donating very selflessly,” Holt said.
The store changes the charities quarterly and this summer has been raising money for two teenagers close to the hearts of borough residents who are battling cancer. The BYOB campaign money is being distributed to the #NikiStrong Foundation and the Team 17 Strong Foundation.
The former benefits Niki Nolte, 19, who graduated from Kutztown Area High School in 2018 and is a student at Penn State and member of the university’s swim and dive team. The latter benefits Anthony Myers, a standout football player at Berks Catholic High School in Reading whose father, Ed Myers, is assistant principal at Kutztown high .
“Both of them are just so positive and so inspirational that it was a pretty obvious choice,” Holt said.
Here are their stories:
Niki Nolte
In her freshman and sophomore years at Kutztown high school, Nolte won the district championship in the 100 meter breaststroke and vowed to compete at the state level her junior year. But after reaching the district championship again, she fell short of her goal. A couple months later she understood why.
Nolte was diagnosed with mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma in April 2017, shortly after her junior year swimming season ended. To treat the rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, she went through 18 weeks of chemotherapy. After being declared cancer-free, she dove back into swimming. As a senior, she medaled in both the 100-meter breaststroke and 200-meter individual medley at the district and state championships.
“I was super proud of that after going through chemotherapy treatment,” Nolte said recently.
With such a successful high school career, Nolte was recruited by Penn State, where she started last fall.
“I’m really happy and thankful that Penn State didn’t look at me as the, you know, the recruit with cancer,” Nolte said. “They looked at me still as a person, still looked at me as a swimmer and could see the potential I still had afterward even going through treatment.”
But only five weeks into her first year of college, she was faced with a new cancer battle when she was diagnosed with treatment-related acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Forced to return home, she took a medical leave from Penn State.
As she went through treatment and awaited a bone marrow transplant, Nolte received overwhelming support from NCAA swim programs. Team after team posted pictures with signs and banners that read #NikiStrong, which the Penn State swim team came up with as a social media campaign for Nolte.
“Feeling all that love definitely helped me get through those tough days when I wasn’t feeling well,” Nolte said.
After receiving a bone marrow transplant from her sister, Krystal, in February, Nolte stayed in Philadelphia for a over a month to remain close to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she was receiving treatment.
Today, she is six months from her transplant, with no evidence of disease. And she’s swimming again. To protect her immune system, she is only allowed in her backyard pool but once she receives the right vaccinations, she can return to public pools. By the time the fall semester starts, Nolte will be ready for a second try at her freshman year at Penn State, where she will study bio-behavioral health and be on the swim team.
“I don’t know how it will go,” she said. “I’m hoping to start training at home, just take this year to train and focus on getting stronger.”
Through the NikiStrong GoFundMe page, the Penn State swim team and other swim programs in the NCAA have raised over $11,000 for the Nolte family. By the end of July, Young Ones had added about $120 to that. Nolte plans to give some of that money to pediatric cancer research — a cause that Penn State students have generously supported with their annual THON dance marathon.
Holt called Nolte an inspiration, saying, “Her motto for life, basically, is that positivity is the best medicine.”
Anthony Myers
Anthony has been playing football since he was 5 years old. In his freshman year at Berks Catholic, he played for the varsity team and scored a touchdown in the district championship game in Hershey.
He was a sophomore last October when he he found out he had brain cancer. Upon hearing the news, he went to football practice, as he had every day. Only this time, he had to break the news to his teammates, his father, Ed Myers said.
After the diagnosis, a neurosurgeon told Anthony he would be allowed to play one more game, giving him another chance to play alongside his older brother, Nico.
In that district semifinal game, Anthony scored two touchdowns.
“It was a tremendous output by him,” Ed Myers said. “That’s really what we look for, good days with good outcomes.”
A week after his last game, Anthony had surgery and has been in and out of treatment since. Earlier this month, he was at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York to have fluid removed from his tumor cavity, Ed Myers said. Recently, he flew to Alabama, where he is hoping to be selected for a clinical trial.
While he is unable to compete in football, nothing can keep Anthony from the 120 yards of turf he calls home. His father said he has been attending 6 a.m. practices and will continue to support his team at practices and games during the school year. Meanwhile, he is training to regain his strength.
The team, along with the Reading and Kutztown communities, has supported him through 10 months of treatment.
“Without their support it would be very difficult to do those things,” Ed Myers said. “They really are fighting with him.”
Young Ones had collected about $80 by the end of July for Team 17 Strong, which was set up to cover treatment and travel for Anthony, who wears number 17. His GoFundMe page has raised over $58,000.
The Myers family appreciates the community’s generosity.
“If you’re going to go through something like this, Berks County and Kutztown is a good place to be just because of the type of people and the support that exists there,” Ed Myers said.
Anthony, through The Anthony Myers Movement, also is raising money to assist other families affected by cancer and to fund research. In May, the organization officially was recognized as a nonprofit and since then, has raised nearly $20,000. Ed Myers said Anthony started the nonprofit to help families that haven’t received the same attention and assistance he has.
Both the Reading Phillies and the Reading Royals hosted events to promote the organization. At the beginning of Anthony’s treatment, the Philadelphia Eagles gave tickets to the entire Berks Catholic High School football team. Anthony has also appeared on the NFL Network’s “Good Morning Football.”
“His ability to deal with it and his spirit is just tremendous,” Ed Myers said, calling Anthony his hero.