Riley Gravelle will admit his long red hair was starting to bug him.
The 17-year-old Widdifield Senior Secondary was part of a huge ceremony at the local high school as a teacher along with two other students and himself, had their hair lopped off and donated to help make wigs for cancer patients.
“It was definitely interesting all the pictures of my hair flying out of my helmet and that’s always fun to see but it will definitely be nice not to have to deal with it anymore, it seems like I took off my backpack it got stuck so I had to try to get it off,” admitted Gravelle who is the star quarterback for the defending NDA Football champions.
The hair cuts were part of the Terry Fox Walk festivities which involved students from Widdifield and its feeder schools WJ Fricker and E.T. Carmichael.
Riley says he got the inspiration to cut the hair from Bo Peltier who also got his first hair cut in three years during the Terry Fox Walk festivities last September.
See that story here.
“That was just a huge inspiration to me to see that so that’s when I really decided that’s when I was going to do it,” said Gravelle about Peltier’s inspiration last year.
“How long I’ve been growing my hair is how long I’ve wanted to cut my hair. I wanted to do it a couple of years ago but I still had colouring dye in my hair so unfortunately I couldn’t do it then but as soon as I cut it I knew this is what I wanted to do.”
Along with the hair Gravelle and his family announced they had raised around $1500 to go towards Cancer research.
Tammy Gravelle was very proud of her son’s accomplishment.
“It’s humbling I can’t believe he decided to do this, not too many boys have long hair, and it’s gorgeous hair, but it means so much and I just ran into an old friend dropping off a beautiful donation here today who literally went through what Terry Fox went through and he kept his leg and his life because of things like this, carrying on the tradition of supporting and loving and caring and I couldn’t be prouder of Riley,” she said.
Jocelyn Summersby-Bell, the organizer at Widdifield Senior Secondary, says events like this make for a memorable day honouring the life of Terry Fox.
“It’s a day of inspiration and a day of hope, and that’s I think one of the best things,” she stated.
“When we come to these walks whichever it is whether its Terry Fox or Breast Cancer or whatever we are walking for. You always get together with a team of people who are hopeful. So although it is a somber topic it’s still a moment to feel some pride and excitement about what our next steps are and moving forward. Plus to see the youth being ready to take that next step and knowing we are leaving it in great hands. It’s so empowering it makes us want to do this every single year.”
