Pink shirts: Waxahachie Firefighters Association raises money for fight against cancer
- Charity Fitch
- Aug 8, 2023
- 2 min read
The Waxahachie Firefighters Association is selling its annual pink shirts at the Waxahachie H-E-B to raise money for the fight against breast cancer and to help raise awareness of the disease.
This year marks the 12th year the association has held the campaign. The shirts this year were designed by Waxahachie High School students through a design competition in May. They have already sold more than 600 shirts this year, and association vice president, Ed Konick, said the T-shirts will be on sale in H-E-B until they are sold out.
“You can just do your shopping and throw one in the buggy and check out with it,” Konick said.
The proceeds go toward both the Dinah Weable Foundation, which pays for mammograms for women in Ellis County, and the Waxahachie Fire Department’s benevolence fund, which supports firefighters battling cancer.
Konick said the association has given more than $33,000 to the Weable Foundation since the campaign started.
“We each have somebody in our family that’s been affected by breast cancer,” he said. “To me, it’s personal and to a lot of the other guys it is as well.”
With the benevolence fund, the association has been able to give several thousand dollars to firefighters in their department who have been diagnosed with a type of cancer, including thyroid cancer, testicular cancer and other.
“It’s presumed that firemen will get cancer,” Konick said. “We’re more likely to get cancer because of the things that we do, the nature of the business, and the carcinogens that we breathe in during a structure fire. A lot of those are known to cause cancer.”
While the shirts used to be worn at the Waxahachie High School Pink Out football game, this year the shirts were worn at the Lady Indians varsity volleyball Pink Out game on Oct. 4.
Each year, the pink shirts are framed and hung up in a hallway at Waxahachie Fire Station 2 on 1601 Cleaver St., with Konick saying each firefighter has a shirt that’s their favorite one.
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