Hello everyone, my name is Matt Ward. Olivia has been a friend of my family for many years, and was basically like the daughter my mother never had, of course until her daughters in law showed up, but suffice is to say, she loved them all deeply, and the connection here runs deep. You are a true dynamo. This event is just one more testament to your ongoing pursuit of connecting and supporting families in positive ways when dealing with this awful disease while uplifting community.
So, it was when I first strutted my stuff for Runway. I was in my senior year of college when Olivia started Runway. A few months earlier my mother had been diagnosed with Stage 4 inflammatory breast cancer.
At the time Runway started was a bit surreal for me. My life had changed. My family had been given the grim diagnosis that my mom had just a few months to live, yet there she was at the first fashion show dancing along with the others on the road to remission.
Little did we know that, thanks to the truly amazing work of the people at MGH, namely Doctor Jerry Younger, and Nurse Practitioner, Nancy Schafer and that my mother would survive another 10 years. My grandfather was a tall quirky man who had grown up dirt poor in the Hill Country of Texas, while my grandmother was the tiny, but mighty oldest daughter of Italian immigrants who had settled in Wakefield MA.
My grandparents moved. I tell you all of this because my mother was so proud of her heritage, her parents humble beginnings, her immigrant roots, her Italian American culture and how, through generations of hard work and love, she was able to pursue the life she wanted. Growing up my mom took on all the responsibilities required of an eldest daughter in the family, namely caring for her two younger siblings, cooking, cleaning, running errands for her grandparents, who hardly spoke English, and tending to the animals at their farm, but none of that ever distracted her from her true love and passion: learning.
