A Bloomington teen who was born with a cleft lip wants to spread awareness about the organization that helped him.
Normal Community High School senior Blake Meyer, 18, is this year's patient ambassador for a 5K race to benefit Shriner's Hospitals for Children.
Bloomington hosts the ninth edition of the Snyder-Shriner 5k Run/Walk on Saturday. It's set to begin at 10 a.m. from the DoubleTree Hotel on Brickyard Drive.
The race, dubbed “The Snyder-Shriner Niner” by Realtor and race organizer Tracy Haas Riley, benefits Shriners Children’s Hospitals, a nonprofit pediatric care organization with 22 clinics across North America.
Blake Meyer plays golf for the school, dreams of being an orthodontist, and travels for annual visits to Shriners Hospital in Chicago to see a team of doctors assigned to treat the cleft lip and palate he was born with 18 years ago.
He calls Shriners “a great place to be” and as the patient ambassador for the race, raising awareness for the organization that’s helped him is key. He’ll have a busier race day than most, leading the cheer squad at the finish line, speaking after the race, and trying to finish with a sub-30 minute time himself, a feat he accomplished last year, even as he said with a laugh, “the knees are hurting, I’m becoming an old man.”
Meyer’s annual trips to Shriners are comprehensive, involving visits with various medical professionals in one day, all in one building on Chicago’s northwest side.
“We don’t have to make appointments with 10 different professionals and go to 10 different places for a visit. That’s a great thing when we go up,” Laura Meyer, Blake’s mom, said.
Blake’s care has been a long process, culminating in a procedure known as a Le Fort osteotomy, a process that connects two parts of the upper jaw previously separated by the space that cleft lip and palate creates.
Meyer’s jawbone is held together by five titanium plates and 22 screws, but according to him, he was eating again only two weeks after the procedure in early June and was able to go on vacation with his family in July.
Blake hopes someday he’ll be able to provide the type of care he received for kids with similar conditions, when asked if he’d want to be an orthodontist with Shriners, he said, “If the opportunity presents itself, absolutely. I’d love to continue working with Shriners, like on this 5K. I’d love to be a Shriner myself and I’d love to work with Shriners as they’ve helped me so much that I just want to give back to the same kids that are just like me.”
Raising money and awareness
A large portion of funding for Shriners comes from community-led initiatives like these. Riley started organizing races in Bloomington-Normal almost a decade ago.
“We were told if we raised $2,000, we’d be doing great. But we decided that wasn’t going to cut it, so the first year we raised $20,000,” Riley said.
The clinics offer care for orthopedic conditions, spinal cord injuries, burns, and cleft lip and palate, from diagnosis to completion of care. This type of comprehensive medical care isn’t cheap to offer “regardless of ability to pay.”
“We’re going to spend probably a billion dollars caring for kids throughout our 22 hospitals,” said Eric Tjarks, a member of the Board of Governors of Shriners Chicago.
Riley’s goal this year is to hit $200,000 raised over the years for the hospital, but she said the main goal for the race is “to raise awareness and to raise money for the Shriners Hospital for Children. And it’s just such an unbelievably fantastic cause and it’s wonderful because the community comes together.”
The race isn’t just a fundraiser. Riley called it “the biggest party in town.”
“We have a live DJ calling all the participants as they come in and cross the finish line.”
There will also be speakers and a cheer squad.
Signup for the race is still open at snydershrinersrace.com. Entry is $30 and includes a T-shirt and a swag bag.
