Crosses for Slade: Community supports Crestline kindergartner undergoing chemo
Last summer, Slade Anderson, 6, announced that he was not going to college and he was not going to get married. He planned to live on the “yellow submarine,” the yellow boat at his family’s lake house. But last week he changed his mind. He now wants to go to college to become a scientist who can find a way to bake medicine into cookies.
The Crestline Elementary kindergartner might be undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia, but he has not lost his funny temperament.
The vivacious Slade will be staying near St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis with his infectious grin until mid-January, but back in Mountain Brook crosses in his honor are popping up on doors and mailboxes, thanks to a campaign started by his aunt, Sarah Kathryn Tarter.
“It’s amazing to see people all over the place showing their support and how this has caught on,” Tarter said.
Slade was diagnosed on Nov. 20, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. He had complained of an earache while visiting his grandparents in Memphis, and after a doctor’s visit and some blood work, the family received the diagnosis within 24 hours. Acute Lympoblastic Leukemia is a form of cancer in which bone marrow makes too many immature lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell).
During treatment, Slade and his parents, Josh and Emily, are living with Emily’s parents in their Memphis home. Afterward, they hope he can return to Birmingham and make bi-monthly follow up visits at the St. Jude Clinic at Huntsville Hospital.
For now, Slade’s younger sisters, Elizabeth Claire, 4, and Louise Shelton “Weesie,” 2, are having “cousin camp” with Aunt Sarah Kathryn and Uncle Eddie, who live a street over from them, and cousins Ella, 3, and Pippin, 1. Tarter is quick to emphasize that her mom and many friends and family members are helping care for the girls as well.
Debbie Anderson, the very proud grandmother of Slade, her first grandchild, first found the crosses at Leaf & Petal. She and Tarter were walking through Crestline on Thanksgiving Day when she mentioned she planned to put a cross on Slade’s family’s front door that she had seen at Leaf & Petal.
Tarter had just said that she should put one on her door too when the idea came – why not get the community involved?
“It’s about the outward sign of support for Slade,” Tarter said.
That Friday, Tarter explained Slade’s diagnosis to Jamie Pursell, general manager at Leaf and Petal. At first Pursell was hesitant to take on the project with the craziness of the holiday season. But a little into further the discussion, he was more than on board to donate a portion from sales of any cross in the store for a fund created for Slade. Tarter then got word about the crosses out on a new Facebook page that friend Vicki Barclay had created.
Within a week and a half, 300 crosses had been purchased, and the “Go Team Slade” Facebook page had more than 1,200 likes.
“It’s incredible,” Tarter said.
The page quickly filled with posts of support – photos of crosses on friends’ doors and mailboxes, and even the Kappa Delta house at Ole Miss (Emily was a KD there in college); updates on when Leaf & Petal ran out of stock temporarily; a picture of Slade’s Sunday school class at Canterbury United Methodist with cards they had made; notes with prayers and scriptures.
And the support doesn’t stop there. Dad Josh and Uncle Jason Anderson have assured Slade that they too will have bare heads.
“Slade wants everyone else to lose their hair as well,” Tarter said. “Slade is going to be the only cute one, though.”
Crosses, available in a variety of sizes and designs, can be purchased at Leaf & Petal’s Mountain Brook Village and Cahaba Heights locations. To follow Slade’s progress, visit the “Go Team Slade” Facebook page.