News & Stories
Cooper Foundation receives $20K from the Sarah Tarditi Gallagher Memorial Fund
For the past 16 years, Cooper Foundation board member Jack Tarditi, and his wife Barbara, hold a special event to honor the memory of their daughter Sarah, whom they lost to leukemia after a three-year battle when she was just 31 years of age.
The Sarah Tarditi Gallagher (STG) Memorial Golf Tournament has raised over $1 million since its inception. All proceeds support South Jersey and the region’s leading non-profits that focus on cancer care.
In February, The Cooper Foundation gratefully accepted a $20,000 donation from the STG Memorial Fund earmarked for MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper “Patient in Need” Fund as the recipient.
The “Patient in Need” Fund provides small financial assistance grants for transportation, childcare, prescriptions and other necessities to cancer patients in need. The grant also provides support for women in cancer treatment who need wigs and cosmetic support while undergoing cancer treatment, who could not have otherwise afforded them.
Jack and Barbara are longtime esteemed, community leaders and very generous supporters of Cooper University Health Care. Beyond their generous contributions to MD Anderson at Cooper, they annually sponsor the Cooper Nursing Excellence Awards. These awards recognize the invaluable efforts of Cooper nurses in providing exceptional patient care.
“Our relationship with Cooper has grown over the years. Barbara and I are involved in a lot of cancer-related activities, and of course, MD Anderson at Cooper has taken cancer care in our region to a whole new level, collaborating with national and regional cancer specialists and a full range of supportive-cancer services to improve the health and well-being of our residents,” said Jack.
In their daughter’s memory, they dedicated a piece of artwork that hangs in MD Anderson at Cooper as part of the Center’s Artful Healing program.
“Everybody has some hardship in their lives,” said Jack. “We’ve had a couple bumps in the road, but otherwise we’ve been blessed.”
In explaining their commitment to the community, Jack summed it up like this: “We believe that we should put back into the well to replenish it for all the world has done for us.”