By Nanette Light
The Norman Transcript
NORMAN — In less than a month, 9-year-old Kassidy Long will be center stage on Broadway, fingers crossed for an encore.
She won’t, however, be spotlighting ranging vocal pipes or fancy footwork when the curtain rises in early June on the stage of New York’s Gershwin Theatre, whose marquee has featured popular musical productions like “Wicked.”
Long, a Truman Elementary third-grader, is one of five finalists selected to read an essay to members of the Broadway Company about her mom’s battle against breast cancer and her Girl Scout troop’s Passionately Pink fundraiser to raise breast cancer awareness — the troop’s “for good” project for last year, funded by its $2,000 earnings from cookie sales. The troop chose the project after Long’s mom was diagnosed with the disease in May 2008.
“I’m sad that my mom got cancer,” Kassidy hand wrote in her essay, which her mom, Heidi Long, said she spent a Saturday afternoon drafting and redrafting. “But my Brownie troop helped get me through it easier.”
On June 5, Long will represent on stage Troop 232 and its breast cancer project, when the group travels to New York for “StudentsLive” and the musical Wicked’s “For Good” Broadway workshop, where Girl Scouts will learn music and choreography from the Broadway show, hear keynote addresses from female speakers and attend a matinee of the musical.
“Here we are, a third-grade troop from Norman, Oklahoma. To be recognized on this national level is amazing,” said troop leader Andrea Marler.
If Long wins, she and two others will receive a backstage tour of the theater.
“Winning isn’t a question. I expect her to. I don’t know what other project can compete with this,” said Heidi Long of the troop’s prospects against other Girl Scouts’ community ventures. “But I’m scared for her. She just seems so young for this.”
The group will hold a Zumbathon from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday at McFarlin Memorial United Methodist Church as its final fundraising initiative to top off the $9,000 already accrued for the trip.
“Sometimes, when you’re going through something like this, there’s not a lot people can do to help you out. They can’t be sick for you,” Heidi Long said of the girls’ Passionately Pink project, a free community event that featured games, food and a speaker, rallied last year in tribute to her illness. “But it’s things like this that let you know there are things people can do.”
Admission to the Zumbathon is $10 and the troop will sell water bottles for $1, along with leftover Girl Scout cookies.
“This was their baby,” Marler said of the breast cancer project culminated now with the New York trip. “It came from them, and that’s what makes it so special.”
Nanette Light 366-3541 nlight@normantranscript.com
