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Published: Sunday, Jun. 14, 2009 / Updated: Sunday, Jun. 14, 2009 12:12 AM

Lemonade stand raises cool cash to treat cancer

FORT MILL -- 

Ten-year-old Louise Lower poured lemonade Saturday afternoon like it was her full-time summer job.

She could fill cups for seven people at a time, and many of her customers were regulars — folks who come once a year to the busy Market Street corner in Fort Mill's Baxter Village to say hello and have a drink.

The fifth-grader's hard work paid off.

In one afternoon, Louise's lemonade stand raised close to $10,000.

But Louise didn't keep the money she made Saturday. She and two other neighborhood children — each diagnosed and treated for pediatric cancer — raised the money for a cause.

Five years ago, Louise's family began the Baxter stand, just one of thousands of lemonade stands across the United States to raise money for childhood cancer research.

The movement began in 2000, when a 4-year-old cancer patient named Alexandra Scott sold lemonade to raise money so doctors could find a cure for kids with cancer. Her inspiration started nationwide fundraising — later called the Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation — which had collected more than $1 million by the time of the child's death in 2004.

Alex's foundation has raised more than $25 million to date for childhood cancer research. Typically, families with diagnosed children come together to start the stands, then send the money to the Pennsylvania-based charity.

Last summer, the Baxter stand reached 125 percent of its fundraising goal in one day. Community members also donate money on the stand's Web site throughout the year.

“Hearing the stories of children who don't make it makes it that much more important to do this every year,” said Jennifer DeNobile on a bench outside the four yellow tents. Her son Vincent, 5, has been cancer-free for almost two years.

DeNobile said she wasn't prepared when doctors told her that her first-born child had cancer.

Lorie Lower couldn't believe it, either, when Louise was diagnosed on her fourth birthday. Things like that don't happen to people you know, she said.

Heather Lux and her husband, Geoff, flew to Boston hours after their son's diagnosis to seek treatment from cancer experts at Boston Children's Hospital. At 3 months, Austin Lux went through grueling bone scans and chemotherapy after his aunt, who is a nurse, felt a lump near his liver.

“I would've gone to Europe if I had to,” Geoff Lux said. “You do what's best for your kid. Everything else goes through the window.”

All three families who run the Fort Mill stand live in Baxter.

All three of their children have been diagnosed and treated for neuroblastoma, a solid tumor that can develop in the adrenal glands and in nerve tissues in the neck, chest, abdomen or pelvis.

Two families moved to Baxter months or years after the diagnoses — the DeNobiles from Florida and the Lux family from Charlotte.

All families say it's an odd — but welcome — coincidence they came together under the cause of childhood cancer research.

“It's a support network,” Heather Lux said. “It's also a celebration.”

“We like to think of each lemonade stand day as a celebration of the milestones our kids make — and how healthy they are after all this.”