Remembering Bella

When the earth-shattering diagnosis of cancer comes to your child, it’s not just about treatment. Your family doesn’t just face pills and IV drips—there are late nights in the ER, grueling hours of tests and all the moments in between while life, inexplicably, keeps moving around you.

This is the reality the Bowman family confronted with their 7-year-old daughter Bella’s brain tumor diagnosis in 2011. And since losing her later that year, it’s a reality Bella’s parents Kim and Trey have softened for other families through the Bella Bowman Foundation.

Since its formation five years ago, the foundation has donated thousands of dollars to pediatric brain cancer research, sent costumed superheroes and Disney princesses to visit young patients and provided thousands of care packages of necessities to families stuck in the hospital.

For Kim Bowman, there’s no act of service too simple or small. She remembers one young, autistic patient and his excitement when her husband rushed to deliver an iPad to him shortly after his cancer diagnosis.

“The momma just looked at me in tears and said, ‘You just don’t understand how much this means to me. I didn’t know what I was going to do at St. Jude with these tests and long hours that he doesn’t understand, and now that he has this iPad, it’s going to be amazing. I can actually talk to the doctors, and he’s going to feel comfortable,’” she says.

Much of this is funded by the annual Bella’s Ball, which marks its fifth year this month. Last year, the fundraiser brought in $198,000 for the foundation with 900 attendees and a night of auctions and entertainment. For 2016, the goal is even bigger, with nearly 200 businesses donating auction items and hopes to top 1,000 attendees and $200,000 raised—a sum that will go in part toward Bowman’s long-term goal of building Bella’s House to provide a comforting home for child patients and their families.

“If Bella was here, I think she’d want to be right in the middle of everything,” Bowman says. “She always wanted to help and make people happy… She definitely sends us signs all the time that she’s still in our work.”

5TH ANNUAL BELLA’S BALL
March 10, 6:30 p.m.
L’Auberge Casino & Hotel
$75 presale, $100 at the door
bellabowman.org