The locks come off for St Baldrick's day

WEDNESDAY, MAR. 21: Father and son duo Greg and Bryce Wojciechowski ‘baldly’ shaved their heads together on Friday night to help raise money for child cancer patients.

They were just two out of a record 47 “shavees” on the island who participated in this year’s St Baldrick’s Day at the Bermuda Athletics Association and Saltus Grammar School.

Greg was encouraged to shave his head after friends of his did so last year. In a classic domino effect when Greg announced to his family what he was going to do, his 15-year-old son Bryce decided to follow suit.

Greg explains: “When I told everyone at home of, course, they all had a chuckle and said ‘what are you going to look like with out your red hair?’ Then Bryce expressed an interest in joining me and I thought this is a great way to do this — as a team — to stand up and put our full weight and support behind the cause together.

“I believe that acts like this continue to go around. If you do something good you can inspire someone else to do something. If each person does something good then we start to move in a positive way.”

Greg, the head of the Bermuda Stock Exchange, has no link to childhood cancer but said he wanted to do this just because he could.

“I think that as a parent, you want to do anything you can to help children, children can’t really help themselves so you want to do everything you possibly can. It is a big struggle and fight and I think it is really amplified for a child because they don’t have the life skills to really cope with it at that stage. This is a charity that not only benefits children world wide but also children in Bermuda as well through PALS.”

Bryce added: “I did it for the same reasons as my dad, I wanted to help people. My friends like it and they all said ‘well-done, good job’. I’d like to do it again and my brother wants to do it now.”

Mother and son Jannis and Jana Swainson-Roberts were another family team to go bald for charity (pictured right).

Insurance worker Tony Rietig was another to take to the shears on Friday night. Tony had a difficult start to the year after being made redundant but said: “despite how bad our situations may be, there are others out there that have it far worse. And in this case I am turning my efforts to try and aid children in their hour of need.”

Tony hopes to raise a total of $30,000 through friends and also corporate matching donations. He added: “I also feel deeply honoured knowing that I have so many special friends that are happy to support me in my challenge.

“Everything I have raised I owe to them as they are the people who encouraged me, teased me, laughed with me and kept me positive throughout.

“I just hope that what I have done might bring a smile to someone’s face and hopefully brightened their day.”

Organizer of the event Katy Daly said that so far a total of $210,000 has been raised but expect that figure to rise to $300,000. Some twenty of this year’s shavees were women and there were 11 children under the age of 18.