If you ask a student at Baldwin High School if they are a member of the school’s Stand Up to Cancer Club, the answer will probably be yes.

Baldwin High School senior Leslie Paige, who is president of the club, said that’s not exactly true. Most students aren’t among the 15 to 20 members able to carve out time in busy morning schedules to attend the club’s 7:30 a.m. meetings. She’s nonetheless proud of their self-identification with the club and the work it does. More important than official membership is the widespread support and effort the school’s students contribute to its success, she said.

The reason for the students’ support is that all can truthfully say they have witnessed cancer’s ravages, Paige said.

Just as the school year was starting in August, BHS students learned their special education teacher Laura Beaulieu lost a long battle to breast cancer. The bad news didn’t end there. BHS communication arts teacher Kathy Cook was also undergoing cancer treatment, as are Sarah Harris, a district first-grade teacher and wife of the BHS journalism teacher Kit Harris, and Baldwin Junior High School teacher Brenda Shawley.

“Every building in our district has been touched,” Paige said. “It was kind of surprising this year, but the support was there.”

Those direct experiences have motivated the students to have a series of fundraisers that raised $4,100 this school year, said Paige and BHS counselor and club sponsor Debbie Baldwin. Of that, $1,100 was donated to the district teachers fighting cancer to help with their needs, Baldwin said.

On Nov. 4, the school’s Stand Up to Cancer Club donated $3,000 it raised since the start of the school year to the Lawrence Memorial Hospital’s Oncology Unit. Tiffany Hall, LMH annual giving manager for endowment, said it was humbling that the BHS students recognized the quality of the LMH Oncology Unit with the gift.

“They have plugged into a deep level of empathy,” she said of the BHS students. “It shows a caring spirit. There are women who are going through chemotherapy who are now connected to that school. There are two teachers in the school district who have had treatment at LMH.

“This has just been a ripple effect,” she said.

Four years ago, then-BHS junior Corey Valentine founded the Stand Up to Cancer Club at the school after losing her father Jeff Valentine to cancer. The club thrived under her leadership in part because that death, too, had a connection to the school district. Corey Valentine’s mother, Marilee Valentine Beins, was a longtime BJHS physical education instructor and coach before retiring last spring.

A BHS volleyball player, Valentine made the team’s annual “Pink Out” match the club’s centerpiece fundraiser. With the help of her mother and numerous other volunteers, the event included a silent auction, bake sale, the evening’s concessions, T-shirt sales and special student-involvement activities.

Baldwin said that tradition continued this year, but the club isn’t done after the one big event. Planned for the holiday season is a choir fundraiser, which will have students visit homes in Baldwin City to raise money through cash, Paige said.

Since Valentine founded the club four years ago, it has raised more than $13,000.

Valentine, now a sophomore at Kansas State University, returned to her high school alma mater for the LMH check presentation on the sixth anniversary of the death of her father.

“It was a very emotional day,” Paige said. “I think she was very gratified the club is still here after she left.”