RSS Feed
|
|||||
|
A young Northfield girl and her family are in danger of losing their home, as a result of financial difficulties incurred through a twelve-year life-and-death struggle with liver failure. Emily Hagen, 16, daughter of Joanna and Andy Sumner of Northfield and John Hagen of Jamaica Plains, Boston, is well-known to area teens because of her participation in the annual summer youth musicals at Chandler Music Hall. A cheerful girl who well understands the preciousness of life, Emily has been described as a person of depth who appreciates every moment and avoids triviality and pettiness. In the past five years, Emily has received three liver transplants, but two rejections. When her body finally accepted the third transplant last spring, her health improved dramatically, and the family was allowing itself to feel optimistic. Now, however, Emily has contracted autoimmune hepatitis, and, according to friend-of-family John Fricke, things are not looking good, either for Emily, or for her family. She is currently a patient at the Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington. Andy Sumner has a good health insurance plan through his job at Dartmouth College, where he works as a security guard, so the medical expenses are not bringing the family to the verge of foreclosure. It’s the mortgage. Sumner has a good job, but in order to meet the mortgage payments, Joanna Sumner must also work. She currently holds down six different jobs, including several part-time music teaching positions. However on several occasions she has left those jobs, sometimes for months at a time, in order to be at her daughter’s side during her many lengthy hospital stays at the Children’s Memorial Care Hospital in Lincoln Park, Chicago, Ill., where Emily received her transplants. The close community of Northfield has rallied three other times for the Hagen family. Now it has raised enough money to temporarily stop the foreclosure on the Sumner home. The deadline was today. Still, the family needs an additional $10,000 to pay off the amount that the Sumners are behind in payments. Now that ASC Mortgage company has received the first amount of $2,072, they are willing to amortize the remainder of the debt over the total loan period. This would amount to increasing the monthly mortgage payment from $1500 to $1625. Joanna Sumner is making every effort to help with the family finances, and to limit her hospital visits to ones she can fit in on evenings and weekends. She works at Orchard Valley School, Roxbury Village School, Waterbury Congregational Church, Associates in Pediatrics, the Student Voice Project with the Vermont Principals’ Association and the Vermont Peace Academy. She also gives private music lessons. In a recent email message, Joanna writes, "I have over the years given up much, missed much, lost much, but would never, ever, take away the time spent, no matter how difficult and scary, with my amazing daughter who fights with the heart of a warrior." Individuals and organizations can help by sending donations to the Merchants Bank, 70 Depot Square, Northfield, Vt., 05663, attention: Doreen Allen. Put in the memo of the check "The Sumner Fund." Those who would like to keep in touch with how Emily is doing can write to Leslie Striebe at: striebe@trans-video.net and ask to be put on her e-mail list. Or, they can log onto carepages.com, with the password "EHagen." Notes of encouragement can be sent to the Sumner family via e-mail at: andysum15@hotmail.com or bassoonervrm@hotmail.com. The Sumner family’s postal address is: 193 Evans Road, Northfield, Vt., 05663. ____________ |
for larger version     |
||||
