Tragedy Turned to Light

In 2003 Andi Stein wife and mother to two sons, Alec and Adam, lost her husband to bacterial meningitis.  Along with taking her husband’s life it also took from her children any sense of growing up as a normal kid.  Alec felt out of place in school, knowing that he must be the only person who had lost a parent.  This isolation as well as her children’s hatred of grief counseling sent the Stein family searching for comfort in another family.  The Flamini family had also recently suffered the loss of their 10 year old daughter from a brain tumor, thus allowing the two families to find common ground over the tragedies that had befallen them.  Dr. Flamini learned that his assistant was a volunteer at the newly formed “Kate’s Club” and the two families decided that it would be very helpful if they enrolled all of the children in the club’s activities.  Andi remembers Kate picking up her boys in a van and driving them to many of the different gathering, never fearing for her children’s safety as she felt total trust in Kate and everything she stood for.  Andi could see Kate’s Club as “a place to turn to when I didn’t have another place”, and knew that her children could finally feel like they were no longer outsiders and that they had a place to call their own.  Where therapy had failed before now Kate’s Club was able to help her family heal. In fact the healing was not just for her children.  Andi herself actually met her fiancé through Kate’s Club.  She met David at one of the Gala events and after dating for some time it seemed only appropriate that he propose to her in the same place, a Kate’s Club gala.  The rest is history in the making.