Loving Anna

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.