Wendy and I are thrilled that we will be the Honorees at the JDRF Piedmont Triad 2023 Hope Bubbles Up Gala. Presented by Truist, the Gala is taking place on Saturday evening, February 11, 2023, at The Benton Convention Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The largest fundraiser of its kind in the Piedmont Triad, the Hope Gala has raised at least $1 million for 11 of the past 12 years, and in 2023 we hope to break the $1.8 million record set by Kelly King of BB&T now Truist!

JDRF’s vision is a world without type 1 diabetes (T1D). To realize that vision, JDRF funds research to cure, prevent, and treat T1D. And that’s extremely important to my family, since our older daughter, Riley, was diagnosed with this disease three years ago at the age of 15. Life with T1D has been a rollercoaster for the entire family, from the moment Wendy drove Riley to the pediatrician’s office with Berkely and their cousin in tow, just to rule out type one and was instead swept away to the emergency department. You never stop figuring this out. Riley has battled this disease with grace and resiliency since day one, but the worry never goes away. What if a situation arises where she can’t manage on her own? Who will know how to help? What if there is a night that one of us doesn’t hear the phone - under our pillow with the volume all the way up – alerting us of a dangerous low? Finding a community of people through JDRF who know and understand exactly what we deal with has been one of the most meaningful things to happen to us since that day. We want to bring that knowledge and that support to everyone we can.

Our greatest hope however is that the work we do together leads to a cure. Every new piece of technology makes Riley’s life better and the disease easier to manage, but we long for the day that she can say “I used to have type one diabetes.”

Please join us in our commitment by making a Fund A Cure gift in honor of our family and the millions of other families that live with the burden of type one diabetes.

Fund A Cure is an opportunity to make an impact on the lives of people living with T1D and their loved ones through a 100% tax-deductible donation that will accelerate life-changing diabetes research. With JDRF research on the brink of numerous scientific breakthroughs to cure, prevent, and treat T1D—including therapies that will restore the body’s ability to produce insulin as well as new technologies such as Insulet’s Omnipod 5, a tubeless artificial pancreas system that was approved by the FDA in January 2022—Fund A Cure donations are more important than ever. Your generous contribution—of any amount—will make a tremendous difference for the Regals and for all people living with T1D!

If you’d prefer to make a Fund A Cure donation by check, please drop it in the mail by June 30, 2023, to: JDRF, 216 West Market Street, Suite B, Greensboro, NC 27401. For more information, please contact Eleanor Schaffner-Mosh at ESchaffner-Mosh@jdrf.org.