Falmouth Resident To Honor Friend Lost To Cancer At Jimmy Fund Walk
Each year, thousands of participants flock to the city for the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk, which is the largest single-day fundraising walk in the nation. When the walk is held on Sunday, Oct. 2 this year, for one Falmouth resident, it will be a walk to remember.
As a former patient herself, Mattie Long is no stranger to the Jimmy Fund or its walk. She was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in 2011, at the age of 16.
“I had an emergency brain surgery on Christmas Eve of 2011,” she said. “My tumor was blocking the ventricle in my brain and my brain was swelling and they had to go in and relieve the pressure by making a hole in my third ventricle.”
Doctors had previously told Ms. Long that it was just a stubborn migraine, but when her vision doubled on the way home from an appointment, her father turned the car around and brought her back to the doctor. There, they looked behind her eye and found a tectal glioma on top of her brain stem, pushing up against her optic nerve.
“I was perfectly fine one day, and then it was just a headache,” she said. “Then three days later I had an emergency surgery.”
Now 26 years old, Ms. Long has been stable since 2016. She lives in Falmouth and works for the town as an animal control officer. After 20 months of chemotherapy, numerous surgeries and a shunt placement, she has been headache free for more than a year and has graduated to yearly check-up appointments. She is looking forward to the Jimmy Fund Walk this year not just because it is the first year back in action since the pandemic, but because she has revived Mattie and Mandy’s Militia, the team she started with her late friend and fellow patient, Amanda (Mandy) Lee.
Ms. Long and Ms. Lee met in 2016 at the Jimmy Fund spring training trip to Florida, where about 100 adolescent patients go on an all-expenses-paid trip and get to meet the Red Sox, play a game on JetBlue Park, hang out in the clubhouse during a game and enjoy other special accommodations.
“All the kids get to feel normal and have a fun weekend,” Ms. Long said. “That’s where I met Amanda and we became inseparable….We have these pictures of this trip and we’re like, ‘How are we not next to each other?’ because that’s how inseparable we were on that trip.”
Ms. Long and Ms. Lee became fast friends, not letting the distance between Falmouth and Springfield, their respective hometowns, stop them from seeing each other often. Texting nonstop helped, too.
“We had this inside joke about the high-heel emoji,” Ms. Long said, referencing a photo of Victoria Beckham kicking up a high-heel-clad foot while laying on her couch that quickly became a viral meme. “Every time we had something to talk about, we would text six high-heel emojis.”
Ms. Long said that she and Ms. Lee always talked about getting a high-heel emoji tattoo. Ms. Lee, unfortunately, died in July 2020 before she got the chance to get the tattoo, but Ms. Long followed through on her promise. Across her wrist, she has Ms. Lee’s initials—ACL—with a small high-heeled shoe right next to it.
The girls were a support system for each other, Ms. Long said. Going through treatment together at the same time was something that strengthened their relationship and allowed them to be there for each other in a way that no one else could quite do.
“She gave me all the strength,” Ms. Long said. “It really made everything so much easier because I talk to people and they’re like, ‘I understand’ and it’s like no, you don’t. No one does except for her. And then to lose that really sucks. We were able to come to each other.”
The two girls, both around the same age, attended Jimmy Fund events together and made memories that have proven to last a lifetime, from being on the mound for the first pitch at a Red Sox game to the Jimmy Fund summer festival at the Franklin Park Zoo. There are plenty of other fond memories, too—watching “Grease,” cracking inside jokes and singing along to the “Wicked” soundtrack—but Ms. Long’s favorite memory with Ms. Lee, she said, is participating in the Jimmy Fund Walk in 2016 and 2017.
“The walk is just such an amazing thing,” Ms. Long said. “There’s that moment when you’re at the starting line, which is at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and there are all the pediatric patients who can’t leave the hospital lined up on the bridge and we wave goodbye to you. It’s just being there in that moment and knowing that this is the place that brought us together.”
This year, Ms. Long will be walking with Mattie and Mandy’s Militia in honor of Ms. Lee. October’s walk will be the first Jimmy Fund Walk that the team has done without Ms. Lee, but Ms. Long is looking forward to honoring her friend at the place where they shared so many memories.
“We’re going to make our custom T-shirts again and it’s going to say ‘In Honor of Amanda “Mandy” Lee’ on the back,” Ms. Long said. “It’s going to be Mattie and Mandy’s Militia because she’s going to be there.”
Just before she died, Ms. Lee had made dean’s list at American International College, where she was studying to become a pediatric oncological nurse. Ms. Lee and Ms. Long initially started Mattie and Mandy’s Militia to walk in memory of those they had lost to cancer.
“I think she’s probably up there beaming, so happy that we’re doing it,” Ms. Long said. “I texted her mom one day and was like, ‘Can we do the Jimmy Fund Walk?’ And she’s like, ‘Her dad and I have been wanting to do something, absolutely sign us up.’”
Ms. Long will be joined at the walk by her family and friends, as well as the family and friends of Ms. Lee.
When asked what Ms. Lee would say to her about all of this, Ms. Long said she thinks Ms. Lee would be laughing and happy to see her family and friends come together to honor her.
“She was always laughing,” Ms. Long said. “She’d be super impressed that we’re doing this. I think her cocky side would come out and she’s like ‘Hell yeah, this is all for me.’ She’d definitely be talking about that. She was the best.”
To donate to Mattie and Mandy’s Militia, visit their donation page on the Dana-Farber Jimmy Fund Walk website.