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Growing up, Annie Blair Eisner celebrated her Oct. 8 birthday for the whole month every year. She called it “Annietober,” which would later become the motto of a cancer foundation in her honor.

Annie, a former student in Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, died on Aug. 25, 2023, from Acute Myeloid Leukemia. During her cancer treatment, Annie received two bone marrow transplants. Today, the Annietober 365 Foundation continues celebrating Annie’s birthday through raising money for medical research.

Her parents, Jodi and Andrew Eisner, started the foundation to raise funds for cancer research and finding matches for bone marrow transplants. In the past year, they have organized cookie sales and transplant match swab drives, raising $365,000 toward cancer research organizations and bone marrow registries.

“(Jodi and Andrew) had been doing a lot of work all last year, but I think they just really wanted to do more. And then it was really the foundation, the nonprofit was really their next step … in keeping Annie’s legacy alive,” Maddie Brachfeld, an SU senior and Hill Communications’ Annietober account supervisor, said.

The foundation needs only five more swabs to reach its long-term goal of 4,400, Brachfeld said.

Annietober was officially founded this past August, though the Eisners first began fundraising through Annie’s Army — an organization that began facilitating swab drives at SU — shortly after Annie’s death.

Brachfeld said they get approximately 100 swabs per drive and are planning to hold up to four drives within the next week. During the drives, they ask volunteers to swab their cheeks for testing to see if they match with a patient in need of a bone marrow transplant. Brachfeld said they have already found 20 matches just from Annie’s Army alone.

Before her diagnosis, Annie would fundraise and participate in cookie sales for cancer, Gabby Izversky, a senior studying business and communications at SU, said. Izversky met Annie in kindergarten and the two remained friends through college.

Izversky said the foundation aims to continue the work that Annie did throughout her life and share her passion with the SU campus community.

The foundation held drives at 20 different colleges over the month of October, largely through the help of Annie’s sorority, Sigma Delta Tau. Through their work, the foundation found a match that led to a bone marrow transplant, Izversky said.

Izversky said she attributes the foundation’s success to the Eisners’ focus on broader on-campus outreach, rather than targeting individuals.

“They’re really, really making sure that everyone understands the mission and (that) what they’re doing is actually going towards something super important,” Izversky said.

Olivia Dublin, an SU senior who first met Annie at Camp Lokanda, called getting involved with Annietober a “no-brainer” — saying she wants to carry on Annie’s legacy of kindness.

She said that, along with the technical fundraising work, the foundation also urges people to appreciate each day as Annie did during her birthday month. Through bone marrow matches and transplants, Dublin said the foundation hopes to give patients another day to celebrate alongside their birthday — their transplant date.

Dublin said she first heard about the foundation from Annie’s mother, Jodi — one of her close friends. One day, when Dublin was at the Eisners’ house, she was brought to tears as Jodi described Annietober to her.

Dublin said her involvement with the foundation, as well as the involvement of others, is done out of love for Annie and the way she moved people.

“Knowing Annie since 2012, (she’s) just a ray of sunshine, very sparkly, every room she walked into, she was always smiling,” Dublin said. “She always made sure to put a smile on everybody’s faces, and that’s something that I continue to do in her memory.”

To celebrate her 22nd birthday, Annietober hosted a “birthday party” tabling event on Oct. 8 in the Schine Student Center. The foundation handed out cupcakes while hosting a swab drive. Brachfeld said, beyond Annie’s birthday month, the foundation hopes to continue its work. Within the next year, it hopes to double its swab count to 8,800.

Jodi wrote in a statement to The Daily Orange that they are trying to expand their reach and connections to grow faster than they did last year, and they ideally hope to reach their new goal in less than a year.

“She loved celebrating her birthday, and she loved life and she was just like this ball of sunshine and rainbows and unicorns,” Brachfeld said. “Everybody who knows her really misses her. And I just want to do everything I can (to help) until I graduate.”

Published on November 12, 2024 at 10:24 pm

Contact Roxanne: rmboychu@syr.edu