August 19, 2008
For Theatre Collection Program, summer is season of change
Michael Rockwood (second from left) with his "tricks of the trade" and fellow Theatre Collections Program volunteers (left to right): sons Joshua and Michael, Jr., wife Susan, and daughters Kristen and Kelly. (Steve Gilbert photo)
Michael Rockwood spent most of his weekends this June and July at the Showcase Cinemas in Revere, but he wasn't indulging in the latest blockbuster — or even the popcorn.
The veteran Dana-Farber staff member was "working the joint" with his daughter, Kristen, as volunteers with the Jimmy Fund/Variety Children's Charity Theatre Collections Program. Started in 1949, the annual effort is the oldest ongoing Jimmy Fund fundraiser and has become a familiar part of New England summers.
During four-hour shifts each Friday and Saturday night, along with a third on Sunday afternoons, this two-generation team split up and traversed the multiplex's 20 theaters so that they'd arrive just a few minutes before each movie began. Continuing a tradition started when Humphrey Bogart ruled Hollywood, they gave a brief talk about Dana-Farber, after which a film short was shown. This "trailer" film has evolved through the years, from appeals by Spencer Tracey and Joan Crawford in the 1950s to the current award-winning story of when ironworkers helping erect the Smith building befriended young patients watching them through windows of the Jimmy Fund Clinic — then spray-painted greetings and the children's names on the growing structure's frame.
Once the trailer was done, father and daughter would pass Jimmy Fund canisters up and down the aisles, then hurry over to the next theater and repeat the process. "A lot of people say 'Thanks, you're doing a wonderful thing,' and some mention that they have lost someone," says Rockwood, one of 120 volunteers who helped with this year's Theatre Collections Program, which ran June 13-Aug. 3. "Once a man who said he had lost his grandson gave me a $100 bill."
Although not every moviegoer is so generous, the smaller bills and coins add up. Volunteers collected $650,000 for research and patient care at Dana-Farber last year alone, and since its inception the program has brought in more than $26 million. Theaters in the Showcase Cinemas chain throughout New England, along with some in New Jersey and New York, took part this summer.
Up until this year, when jobs interfered, the program was an even bigger Rockwood family affair. In addition to Kristen, Michael's wife and Dana-Farber colleague Susan, of Medical Records, were part of his crew for the past seven summers, as were their three other children: Kelly, Michael, Jr., and Joshua. When they started, Joshua was just 7.
"First we did it because I worked here, and it seemed like the right thing to do," says Michael Rockwood, whose family has also helped out at the Jimmy Fund Clinic Summer Festival, Scooper Bowl, and other events. "Then last year my sister-in-law and brother-in-law both died of cancer within two days of each other, and it hit home even more."
Kristen says she too has gained a deeper appreciation for the effort, and when she encounters friends during her rounds she makes sure they contribute. "We used to make it into a game," she recalls. "Whoever had the lightest canister at the end of the night had to buy dinner for the rest of the family."
— Saul Wisnia
saul_wisnia@dfci.harvard.edu
To learn more about the Theatre Collections Program, and to view Jimmy Fund "trailer" films going back to the 1950s, visit www.jimmyfund.org/trailers.
