Becoming bald by choice at St. Baldrick’s event

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Along with the jubilant festivities for St. Patrick’s Day in Glen Cove, the Downtown Café, on School Street, held its annual St. Baldrick’s Foundation fundraiser, in which participants have their head shaved to raise money for childhood cancer research and treatment, last Sunday. The goal this year was to raise $25,000. At press time, the total had reached roughly $12,200.

John Zozzaro, the owner of the Downtown Café, was one of the first volunteers for the stylists from Glen Cove’s Strong Island Styles. Zozzaro has been hosting the event, which coincides with the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, outside his restaurant for 14 years. This year would have been the 16th year, but the coronavirus pandemic forced a two-year hiatus.

“Everybody is having a good time, like usual,” Zozzaro said on Sunday. “Seems like nothing has happened.”

After the parade ended, the crowd outside the café grew. Several dozen diners and onlookers watched friends, family members and total strangers lose their locks.

In the barber chair next to Zozzaro was Rich McGrady, who has taken part every year since 2014 to honor a friend’s son, Nicholas Pedone, who died of cancer when he was just 7 in 2013. “Started doing it and stuck with it,” McGrady said. “It’s a very good cause.”

The Nicholas Pedone Foundation was accepting donations at the event, and offering T-shirts and merchandise. Nicholas was a special St. Baldrick’s posthumous honoree in 2014.

Strong Island Styles’ owner, Brian Basile, has been helping with the fundraiser since it started in 2007.

“It feels really, really good to be back,” Basile said. “I feel like it brings a little normalcy back into our community.”

This year’s honorary child was Ezra Gibson, 2, who was diagnosed with a neuroblastoma when he was just 4 months old. A mass on his adrenal gland required screening every two weeks to monitor its growth. At eight months, Ezra had surgery to remove the tumor, which had started to obstruct his organs.

He has been doing well, but he continues to receive routine scans. He will celebrate his third birthday on Saturday.

“You would never know that something like this would happen to your child,” his father, David Gibson, said.

Gibson, who grew up in Glen Cove, said he was touched by the support he received from residents. The motto of Ezra’s team is “Heal, teach, inspire.”

“The fact that so many people from here, from Glen Cove … gave us support,” Gibson said. “And in that situation, you don’t know, as a parent, what to think, what to do, but it just blows my mind that Glen Cove was just so embracing [of] us through this.”

Their faith, Gibson said, helped the family get through a difficult time. “Why is this happening to a newborn?” he wondered. “He’s never done anything in this world to go through this. … We turned to the Bible a lot during this time.”

There was a raffle and merchandise for sale in Ezra’s honor, which raised more than $728.

Jacki Yonick, the Glen Cove Youth Bureau’s employment coordinator, had all her hair shaved off, too, and raised the most money, roughly $5,000 for the fundraiser. This was the first time Yonick took part in the event.

“I think the conversation about children with cancer needs to happen,” she said. “So why children have cancer, why does it need to be researched, [and] what’s happening. I think more people need to have that kind of conversation.”

Yonick had some advice for other women and girls who might be leery about shaving their heads. “You’re beautiful,” she said. “Hair doesn’t make you pretty, your insides do. Show everybody how beautiful you are from the inside out.”