Donating spare hair gives family warm, fuzzy feeling

Locks of Love helps patients deal with loss of tresses

Friday, Feb. 13, 2009

Click here to enlarge this photo Submitted photo The Reeder family shows off new haircuts, which they got after donating their hair to Locks of Love. Locks of Love supplies human-hair wigs to children going through cancer treatment, which may cause baldness. From left to right are Lexi Reeder, hairdresser Denise Jolly, Laura Reeder and Mackenzie Reeder. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story   To learn more To donate hair, or to learn more about the program, go to www.locksoflove.org.

The last time Laura Reeder of Welcome got a haircut she was 5.

Last Friday, 33-year-old Reeder and her two daughters, Mackenzie, 7, and Lexi, 5, donated more than 30 inches of hair to Locks of Love.

Locks of Love is a program which provides children suffering from cancer and alopecia with wigs. While cancer treatments save lives, they have numerous side effects. One of the hardest for many to cope with is hair loss. Alopecia results in hair loss that can be nearly complete. That is where Locks of Love comes in.

"Mackenzie was looking at a Parents magazine and she saw a little girl with a bald head," Reeder said. "She asked me what happened to her hair. No one that we know has had cancer or lost their hair, so that wasn't something that she had ever seen before."

"Mackenzie said she felt sad for the little girl who didn't have any hair," Reeder said. "We did some research and found out that hair loss due to cancer isn't permanent, it grows back, but the people without hair need to wear hats or wigs until it does."

Reeder said that some children with alopecia never grow their hair back and must wear permanent wigs.

That is when her kids had a brainstorm.

"Mackenzie said ‘We can give them our hair'," Reeder said. "We can always grow more hair, and then we can donate it again and again."

Tyler Reeder, the girls' father, has always loved long hair, but after hearing his family talk about it for about a week, he agreed to the donations.

"Our girls can always grow their hair back, and the other girls can't," Tyler Reeder said. "I am quite proud of them, actually."

Laura Reeder said donating to Locks of Love is easy.

"If you go online, they give you step-by-step guidelines for donating hair," Laura Reeder said. "They don't accept colored or permed hair for the wigs, because of the chemicals involved, but they will sell the hair if you donate it and use the money to offset the cost of making wigs. The hair must be donated in a ponytail or a braid."

Laura Reeder was able to donate two portions of her long hair, the top part which had highlights, and a long ponytail which had never seen any chemical treatments.

Laura Reeder has no regrets about cutting the hair that she had grown for so long.

"I have never had hair that is anywhere near this short," she said of her now shoulder-length hairstyle. "I like the hairstyle they gave me when they cut it. It takes a little longer to style, but I save time on drying and money on shampoo.

"I am so proud of my kids for being so selfless," she added. "They loved their long hair, but they wanted to help those kids. It made me feel like a good parent that I raised them to be good to others, not just family and friends."

Laura Reeder said her girls, who attend Walter J. Mitchell Elementary School in La Plata, are always helpful to everyone.

"My daughters will come home and say that they played with some of the special needs kids who can't walk," Laura Reeder said. "That is when I know I did something right when I raised them, and their Maw Maw must have raised me right, to have my kids turn out so well."

jnazdin@somdnews.com