Friday, February 05, 1999
Students bringing light to girl who can't bear sunshine
BY JANET C. WETZEL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
SHARONVILLE — They're breaking the bank for little Abby.
Princeton Junior High School students are turning their pockets inside-out to do something special for Abby Perkins-Banks.
Abby, 5, a tiny freckle-faced Middletown girl, is battling a rare, genetic disease called xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), which makes her allergic to the warm sunshine and other ultraviolet light.
When five female students in Mary Query's eighth-grade English class read about Abby in The Cincinnati Enquirer last month, they vowed to do something to bring her a shot of their own brand of sunshine.
Rachel White, 14, and Jennifer Tolbert, Betsy Holley, Natalie Flood and Mary Sanders, all 13, launched a schoolwide awareness campaign about Abby and her disease.
In an “infomercial” about Abby that the girls wrote and produced to be played over the school television each morning, they said, “Can you imagine being 5 years old and not being able to go outside without the risk of death? This is how a little girl named Abby in Middletown, Ohio, lives.”
Abby is one of fewer than 1,000 XP children in the world.
As they began blanketing the school with colorful posters about Abby, the girls' idea began to catch fire. Now the whole 1,000-member student body is getting involved.
Students have launched a “quarter war” to see which class can raise the most money to take Abby out for an afternoon of fun at Sports Plus Cincinnati Inc. in Evendale.
Any balance will go for other needs — such as buying her another special NASA suit that allows her to spend up to three hours at a time outdoors.
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