Roy-Hart Learning Center students rally to support classmate battling cancer

Press Release, Orleans/Niagara BOCES

Provided photo: Abbie McNett is fighting a rare cancer.

MIDDLEPORT – Orleans/Niagara BOCES’ Roy-Hart Learning Center is a tightknit group and considers themselves family.

One of their own is now in a fight of her life. Student Abbie McNett is battling Rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare type of cancer that forms in soft tissue, specifically skeletal muscle tissue or sometimes hollow organs such as the bladder or uterus.

Her family and friends are holding a fundraiser on May 7 from noon to 5 p.m. at the Rescue Firehall at 1241 Strad Avenue in North Tonawanda. The event is to help her family with her care. Tickets are available presale and at the door. Admission includes beer and wine, food and lots of fun like a photo booth, DJ, 50/50 raffle, Chinese Auction and caricatures by Murray Mann. Presale tickets can be purchased by contacting Jackie Karnuth at 716-507-3342 or Megan Davis at 716-949-1544.

Abbie’s Roy-Hart Learning Center family is supporting Abbie and her family by collecting items and making some of the baskets for the raffle. They have also been instrumental in signing up to volunteer during the fundraiser, buying tickets and solicitation for additional donations.

Her teacher, Samantha Kurdziel, has this to say about Abbie.  “Not a day goes by where the staff and students here don’t think of her. She is an amazing, smart, silly and lovely girl. Abbie would make your day with her contagious laugh or one of her school famous dance moves, but it is her continuous jokes that made us fall in love with her. The staff and students at Royalton-Hartland Learning Center miss seeing her and her beautiful smile every day.”