To the editor:

Hope is alive and well in Hampton Roads, thanks to the Roc Solid Foundation.

This non-profit organization was founded on the motto, “Building hope for kids with cancer,” and that is exactly what it recently did for our 11-year old son, Jackson, and our whole family.

I had heard about Roc Solid about a year ago at the Suffolk Rotary Club, when the organizations’ founder and “Chief Play Officer,” Eric Newman, came to tell us Roc Solid’s story.

However, until Jackson received his Roc Solid “Ready Bag” the day he was diagnosed with stage III Hodgkins lymphoma at Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters, Roc Solid wasn’t really a part of our lives.

The “Ready Bag” had everything in it that we didn’t even know we needed to get us through our journey during the next days and months, and Roc Solid was there with us every step of the way.

When our friends, Julie and Mark Mizelle of ITM Construction, introduced us to Eric, his personal story of hope as a pediatric cancer survivor inspired our family and gave Jackson his first glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel.

On May 16, the day the Roc Solid team revealed the culmination of its hard work to us, that light was blinding!

As an employee of Western Tidewater Free Clinic, I see firsthand every day how the passion and caring of volunteers provide health and hope for those who need it.

The coordinated and massive display of love shown through this Roc Solid project was unbelievably humbling, as we found ourselves on the receiving end of incredible compassion, and our family will never be the same.

Jackson successfully finished his chemotherapy in March and is in remission, thanks to the amazing doctors and nurses at CHKD. Eric, his Roc Solid team, his community partners, and his countless volunteers gave us an opportunity to reset and restart our lives through this amazing multi-room remodel.

Roc Solid has been best known for building playsets for children with cancer. We have pledged to “play it forward” and help Roc Solid spread smiles, while showing other children battling cancer what hope looks like.

Our family would like to humbly thank All First Industrial Contractors, BB&T, Cherry Carpet & Flooring, Chick-fil-A on Main Street, Hampton Roads Financial, ITM Construction and the Mizelle family, Massimo Zanetti and the Quier family, Nansemond-Suffolk Academy, North Suffolk Rotary Club, Southern Material, Style by Design — Amy Stanley, XP Networking and the McCollum family and the untold others who supported this incredible project.

To the countless volunteers, known and unknown to us personally, who spent hours away from their own families to help our family, God bless you for sharing your gifts.

To the Roc Solid Foundation, its board of directors, its corporate sponsors at-large, and to Eric Newman and his own beautiful family, thank you for sharing all that is good and full of grace with others and proving that cancer cannot limit us and no one fights alone.

Please accept our deepest apologies for any errors in omission. To learn more visit www.rocsolidfoundation.org.

Super Jax and the Greene Gang

(Andy, Ashley, Arynne, Addy, Jackson and Parker Greene)