ORLANDO, FL—A parent’s love is like no other. When a child is stricken with cancer, the parents and child are fighting the disease together.
Over the last several years, Rosen Hotels & Resorts has championed Runway to Hope’s mission: to support families, primarily in Central Florida, fighting pediatric cancer while seeking a cure.
“We’ve been supporting it since it started about eight or nine years ago,” said Harris Rosen, president/COO of Rosen Hotels & Resorts. “We know of a number of families, including our own, that had cancer within the families, and so we thought that supporting an enterprise would be appropriate.”
This cause is deeply personal to Rosen as his 26-year-old son had anaplastic astrocytoma, a malignant brain tumor. “Our youngest son, Adam, passed recently due to brain cancer, and so our support regarding Runway to Hope has increased because of Adam’s illness and death,” he said.
This year, Runway to Hope’s fundraising efforts broke records. A significant $1.5 million was raised at the Adam Michael Rosen Foundation Presents Runway to Hope’s annual Spring Soiree. The donations will be used to fund programs in all three children’s pediatric oncology programs in Central Florida as well as directly benefit children through Runway to Hope’s Family Assistance Program.
As a result of his son’s passing, Rosen is determined to take the mission forward with his own foundation—The Harris Rosen Foundation. Earlier this year, he made a $12-million donation to fund a unique collaboration of researchers to find a cure or treatment for brain cancer.
“We will be working with the University of Florida’s brain cancer institute, and we submitted a gift to the university, which has given it an excellent start in terms of fundraising efforts,” said Rosen. “The gift will represent a substantial change philosophically in terms of how cancer treatment or cures are created. Instead of universities and labs working individually, this initiative will include 12 universities working together to find a cure or treatment for all brain cancers. There will be two labs—the Adam Rosen Lab and the Adam Michael Rosen Clinic. Our hope is that within a 10-year period, there’s a good chance a cure or treatment will be achieved. This new collaboration will no doubt expedite the findings dramatically.”
The Adam Michael Rosen Foundation will continue to provide funding to Runway to Hope.
Rosen noted that there’s more work to be done, and he will continue to be a part of the efforts in the future. “There’s no doubt we will be a major sponsor as we were this year. We hope that we may even surpass this year’s record-breaking fundraising effort,” he said. “It’s wonderful to see this happen, and Adam would be very proud.”
