Ceili (pronounced Kay-Lee) Leahy, the young woman who stopped her cancer treatments in September 2015 to spend the rest of her life with family and friends at home, died this week. She was 19.
“We first met then 18-year-old Ceili on September 1, 2015,” said Ted Schubel, news director at B101.5 and WFVA/1230AM. Ceili and Andie McConnell with the Fairy Godmother Project were guests on Town Talk and Dee in the Morning.
“The first thing you noticed was her enthusiasm and poise,” Schubel said. “In great detail she described her battles with two forms of cancer. She also told us her dream to see the Rockies. We put the word out and the community responded–in a big way. Donations of a plane, fuel and money followed.”
“Our hearts are broken tonight,” wrote Dee Daniels on behalf of the B101.5 staff on Facebook. “Our friend Ceili passed away. She taught us, and the community, how to live, laugh and fight. We mourn with her friends and family who knew her much longer than we did. We thank the Fairy Godmother Project for introducing us to Ceili. We thank her family for allowing us to tell her story. In the truest sense, Ceili had cancer. But cancer did not have Ceili.”
Ceili, a James Monroe High School graduate, developed Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) as a secondary cancer, resulting from a drug used to fight her first cancer.
The Fairy Godmother Project is a Fredericksburg-based nonprofit whose mission is to ease the burden of every day life for local families who have a child in treatment for a form of pediatric cancer.
Andie McConnell formed Fairy Godmother Project in 2011 after befriending a local family who had a child with cancer. Through a survey of other families in similar situations, McConnell learned that they all need help with daily household tasks and with taking care of their other children.
If you would like to help, visit the Fairy Godmother Project website at http://www.fairygodmotherproject.org/ or call 540-645-4282.
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