Loving Anna

08/14/2026

Creating and posting on our Loving Anna page has been life changing for us, and for so many children who are literally fighting for their little lives. The love and donations you continue to pour into Anna’s Angel Fund far exceeds anything we ever dreamed of. It’s impossible to thank you adequately for all you do to replace the desperation and fear in the hearts of these children and their families, with hope. Over and over, you graciously wrap them in the knowledge that anonymous angels care about them. We can’t stop the pain that consumes these children, or the anguish their families face. We can’t hold them and tell them that everything will be all right. Many times, it won’t. But your kindness consistently makes it possible for us to help ease their pain. And your gifts also continue to honor Anna’s passion for helping them. That means everything to us. We are so appreciative of all that you give, and we know that Anna would be so touched by those of you who help honor her memory.

Larry and I will continue to manage and contribute to Anna’s Angel Fund for as long as we are able, because these pediatric cancer patients need the help and hope these gifts offer as much as ever. But we have decided not to post on this Loving Anna page anymore. It’s been a hard year for us, and we’ve decided that posting here is just too difficult. We ask that you please continue to donate to Anna’s Angel Fund though, knowing that you will always receive a thank you note letting you know what your generosity has allowed us to do. We would be especially grateful if you would remember Anna and make donations on her Heaven Day, August 29th, and on her birthday, January 2nd. As always, your tax-deductible gifts can be sent to the website below.

Thank you so much for all you do to support Anna’s Angel Fund. We are so humbled and grateful that you continue to choose to be angels in the lives of the children and their families, and in our lives, too.

With Love,
Lisa and Larry

www.curechildhoodcancer.org/Anna

“We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.”
Luciano de Crescento

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God." 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Be an angel for children with Anna's Angel Fund. Support CURE Childhood Cancer's mission for a cancer-free future!

01/02/2026

Happy Birthday in Heaven, Anna! Our hearts are so full of gratitude, knowing that your vision is restored and that you can take in the beauty of heaven. And we are forever thankful that you can now hear music and the voices of the angels. We pray that you are dancing to your hearts delight, with all the joy your soul can hold. May God forever surround you with animals, especially dogs and giraffes, and with everything pink.

Our hearts grieve the loss of you here, but we celebrate the life you lived, and the legacy of love and grace you left behind. Because of your compassion and kindness, hundreds and hundreds of pediatric cancer patients have been given hope when they felt hopeless, and they’ve felt the love of complete strangers in their darkest moments. Even now, your Angel Fund legacy continues to bring help and peace to the lives of pediatric cancer patients and their families. And along the way, you met and inspired so many wonderful people who became our friends. You left such sweet memories with them, and they still talk about how special you were.

As always, we will meet Meg at Mostly Mutts today to deliver a donation and birthday cupcakes, along with Meg’s gifts for them. And we will eat something chocolate! Today and always, we celebrate your passion and purpose in life, and we cherish the love we shared with you. May the angels hold you close and sing you a joyful song today. We’ll love and miss you forever, sweet Anna…until we see you and hold you again. 🩷

www.curechildhoodcancer.org/Anna

12/19/2025

It seems that God often does His greatest work in the places where life seems to be the darkest, most grief-filled, and scariest places. He sits with us and walks with us thorough it all. His Spirit and His grace are lights that shine in the darkness and help us heal in ways we cannot heal without Him. We pray that all of the families whose children are facing cancer, as well as our friends who are suffering and/or living in painful places, will feel His love and presence in many special ways this Christmas. We know that our God is a God of love, who sits beside us though every painful and joyful moment in our lives. He has come down, in Jesus, to remind us that there is love, grace, and hope in the world around us, offered by kind and loving people like you.

Below are a few examples of the ways you have most recently helped us make a positive impact in the pediatric cancer world.

- Two very young children who have DIPG - a rare, aggressive, and fast-growing brain tumor in the brain stem's pons. The location and the aggressiveness of the tumor make it very difficult to treat and the prognosis for a child with this tumor is poor. One of these children is now at home, in the care of hospice. The other child’s cancer has not progressed as far, but she is losing her battle as well. You gave us the means to make a rent payment for one of these families, and a mortgage payment for the other. Because of you, we were also able to make a car payment, pay utility bills and provide groceries.

- A baby with ATRT, a rare, aggressive, malignant brain and spinal cord tumor. This family has many additional stress factors in their lives, along with watching their baby suffer through treatments. For this family, Anna's Angel Fund was able to help with transportation to treatments and utility bills.

- Three very young children with ALL (Leukemia). One of them has relapsed twice, even after having a bone marrow transplant. Most recently this child took part in a clinical trial, but it was unsuccessful. Her prognosis is very poor. Anna’s Angel Fund was able to pay this family’s mortgage. The second child is a toddler. This child has had many complications during treatments. Because of these complications, and because this single mom’s job was impacted by the government shutdown, they have fallen behind in paying bills. Your generosity made it possible for us to pay their rent and provide them with gift cards for groceries. And finally, the third child is only three weeks old. The mother of this child is single and has other children to support. She had to take a great deal of unpaid time off from work and was only able to make partial rent payments. You paid the balance.

- A teenager who has been diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare cancer of the body's connective tissues. He has spent quite a bit of time in the hospital for inpatient chemotherapy and daily radiation. His hospitalizations and care have made it very difficult for his parents to work, but your gifts allowed us to help them with rent and utility bills.

Candles are an important symbol in many holiday traditions. This Christmas, we pray that those of you who are able, will offer these pediatric cancer warriors a little light in their darkness. Your donations help hold back the dark and give them the light of hope. And they let these children and their families know that they matter, that there are strangers who care about their suffering, and that their lives are worth fighting for. And most importantly for us, it honors Anna and her dreams of making a difference in their lives.

We pray that you and your families will be able to wrap yourselves in the love of Christ this Christmas and lean into His love. If you are able, we would be so grateful if you would click on this link to help us make this holiday season easier for the pediatric cancer families we serve.

www.curechildhoodcancer.org/Anna

We wish you a very, Merry Christmas, and for those of you who celebrate Hanukkah, we wish you a Happy Hanukkah!

With love and grateful hearts,

Larry and Lisa

“The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.”
"O Little Town of Bethlehem", words written by Phillips Brooks in 1868

11/21/2025

Many of our friends so graciously donated to Tucker O'Brien's fundraiser for Anna's Angel Fund. Thank you so much! Tucker was an amazing friend to Anna when they were in school at Georgia College and State University. He has such a special and compassionate heart. His GoFundMe efforts are now complete and, with your help, he raised $1025 for Anna's Angel Fund!! Words can't begin to express how grateful we are that Tucker wanted to do this to honor Anna, and support her Angel Fund. Tucker is such an amazing man and we pray that he will be blessed for his kindness to Anna in the past, and now as a tribute to her memory. Below is a link to his post today on the GoFundMe page.

This November, I will be riding 200 miles on the Palmetto Tra… Tucker OBrien needs your support for Anna Hanger Memorial Ride Fundraiser: Charleston to Columbia

09/14/2025

As many of you know, September is Childhood Cancer Awareness month. In celebration and remembrance of that, I hope you'll watch this short video and feel the joy I do when watching it! Some of the best docs, nurses, and staff in the world participated in this video, and Larry and I will forever be grateful for the love and care they, and many others, poured out on our precious Anna at AFLAC 🩷 Thank you so much for sharing this Dr. Howard Katzenstein. Please take a minute to watch! www.curechildhoodcancer.org/Anna

Cancer. It is a battle too many of our young children and teenagers must face every day. Each year, more than 10,000 new cases of childhood cancer are diagno...

08/29/2025

Today is another milestone. Another anniversary. On this day in 2020, at 1:45pm, Anna’s soul entered the gates of Heaven and the arms of Jesus. We’ll forever work hard to reconcile the emotions of losing her, with knowing the joy and peace she experiences now, in His presence.

We haven’t been able to attend a funeral since Anna passed away. It’s just too hard. But recently, we decided to go to one to support a friend. It seemed doable since we were there to offer love and support to our friend, and we didn’t know the person she’d lost. There were lots of great stories about this man, who was obviously so very special. One of the pastors spoke specifically to his grandchildren, to comfort them in their loss of their grandfather. His words struck me in a such special way. As he stood before them, he held a very large bag of seashells. He spoke about the lives of the creatures who used to live in those shells – all of their experiences on the ocean floor, seeing things that none of us will likely ever see. They each had a purpose and faithfully fulfilled their purposes, up until their lives ended. He opened the bag and spilled out all the shells – all beautiful and so different. Starfish, conch shells, tritons, scallops, miters, snails, and so many others covered his lectern. The animals that were inside were gone now, but he urged these grandchildren to look at the beauty they left behind. He then offered each one of them a shell to keep as a reminder of the beauty and gifts that remain because of the life their grandfather lived.

It was such a beautiful story, and it must have been so comforting to them. But it also made me think about Anna. She lived every day, trying her best to make the lives of others better. She rarely thought of herself or entertained self-pity. In the years after her diagnosis, she faced daily, constant struggles due to the ways her cancer and treatments had ravaged her body. But she rarely cried, until she grew too weary to fight her cancer anymore. Then the tears flowed as she was saying her last goodbyes to many of the people she loved most. On this hard and beautiful anniversary, we will try our best to focus on the love she left behind. Her life was filled with meaning and her “shell”, the gifts she gave, remain. She poured her love into her passions and into the lives of the people and animals she loved most, as well as the tremendous numbers of pediatric cancer patients who were strangers. Anna left a beautiful legacy.

Ironically, Anna and I got a conch shell from the ocean while we were on a mission trip to Honduras, the month before she was first diagnosed with cancer at the age of twelve. We’ve always loved it, but now Larry and I treasure it in a much more special way. It has always served as a precious memory of our mission trip, but now it also serves as a reminder of the beauty, the love, and the gifts Anna left here.

Especially on this day, we want to say thank you so much to those of you who remember and loved Anna. It means everything to us.

www.curechildhoodcancer.org/Anna

07/31/2025

This is what makes CURE Childhood Cancer so special! Their research offers so much hope to pediatric cancer patients and their families.🎗️❤️

Read our post about 2025 Research Awards on the CURE Childhood Cancer blog.

07/07/2025

It’s hard to believe how much time has gone by since Anna entered Heaven. It feels like it was just yesterday that we were making decisions together about the families we might be able to help with her Angel Fund. Today, the emotional connection that Larry and I feel to these families remains powerful. There are so many children who continue to be diagnosed with cancer. Every year, in the United States alone, 15,780 children between birth and 19 years old are diagnosed with cancer. And when children are newly diagnosed, families crumble physically and emotionally, upon hearing that their child has cancer. Their hearts become so burdened with thoughts of their children’s suddenly altered lives, treatment side effects, ever-mounting bills, and fear of what the future holds.

But the grace you offer them through your gifts is immeasurable. Your gifts bring such a special glimmer of hope to the families who need it the most, allowing them to pour themselves fully into caring for their children.

Below are a few of the lives your generosity and love have so sweetly impacted:

- A very young child who was diagnosed with DIPG, an extremely aggressive and deadly brain tumor. Mom had to take a family medical leave because her child was steadily declining. As a result, she had no income and was living off of her savings. Her child was eventually moved to hospice care. With your help, we were able to help her with rent, utility bills, and groceries.

- A teenager who was diagnosed with a germ cell tumor, a rare type of brain cancer. This child was having daily radiation treatments, and it was a struggle for the family to get him to the hospital every day. Even with his siblings pitching in to help pay bills and drive him to treatments, they were struggling. Your gifts allowed us to pay several utility bills for this family and prevent their services from being disconnected.

- A child whose fight with leukemia seemed endless. This child went through CAR-T therapy (a type of cancer immunotherapy that modifies a patient's own T cells to target and destroy cancer cells.) Unfortunately, this treatment failed, and the next step was a bone marrow transplant. Because of this child’s needs for constant care, mom wasn’t able to work. That has left them struggling to make ends meet. You allowed us to provide them with gas cards and help with their mortgage.

- Recently, Anna’s Angel Fund has supported a number of teenagers who have been diagnosed with different types of leukemia, including ALL and B-Cell ALL. One of these children was not only fighting leukemia, but also fighting a terminal brain tumor. The fear and trauma these families experience is just unimaginable. Some of these children have already endured treatments that failed, and now they are either terminal or enduring a new treatment, such as a bone marrow transplant.

Your gracious gifts to Anna’s Angel Fund also support our efforts to honor our precious Anna’s memory. Because of her great desire to help the children who were fighting cancer along with her, this fund meant everything to Anna. And so, it means the world to us, too. We pray that your current donations will continue, and also that hearts of new donors will be moved to help us support more families. The needs are tremendous, and we’d be deeply grateful for your help. There is much more that we would love to do! www.curechildhoodcancer.org/Anna

Thank you, as always, for your love and support!

Larry and Lisa

“I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.” ―J.R.R. Tolkien

Pictures are of Anna's amazing neuro-oncologist ❤️ She is a treasure.

01/02/2025

Happy Birthday in Heaven to our precious angel, Anna.

Today, in your honor, we will buy pink flowers and give them away.
We will pray for God’s greatest blessings to fill and surround your soul.
We will pray that the angels will dance with you.
And we will eat something chocolate that you would have loved.
We’ll deliver gifts and birthday cupcakes to your friends at Mostly Mutts - where you surely left a part of your heart.
We will see Meg, who you adored.
We will celebrate the difference you made here, and all the love you so sweetly and graciously gave away.
And we will celebrate the love we shared and all the precious memories we made with you.
We will miss you desperately and grieve that you are not here - just as we do every day. And we will long for the part of our hearts that are with you in Heaven.

Most of all, we will thank God that He so graciously chose us to be your mom and dad, and we will hold on tightly to the promise of seeing you again!

We’ll love you forever, Anna, from the deepest part of our hearts.
www.curechildhoodcancer.org/Anna

“Some souls leave behind a trail of light that is never forgotten. “