Professor gives gifts of loving locks

Jennifer Flory, director of choral activities and associate professor of music, and her husband, Bill, donated their long locks of hair to good causes at the beginning of August.

Flory said she and her husband made the decision to donate their hair because they both have lost a parent to cancer in recent years.

“My husband’s father died of lung cancer in 2008, and my mother died in September of 2010 from pancreatic cancer that had spread to her liver.” Jennifer said. “I started growing out my hair the summer she got sick, but I didn’t know it was going to take a whole year.”

Bill, a physics major at Georgia College, had his hair shaved on Aug. 4, and donated 14 inches to Locks of Love.

Jennifer had her hair divided into two ponytails on the front of her head and two ponytails on the back. When the ponytails were cut off on Aug. 13, she donated the 8-inch ponytails from the back to Pantene Beautiful Lengths and the 10-inch ponytails from the front to Locks of Love.

Jennifer says that she researched the length requirements for both the Pantene Beautiful Lengths and Locks for Love before cutting her hair.

“I went on the Internet for both programs to print the instructions and brought them to my hairdresser,” Jennifer said. “The hair needs to be dry, clean, no more than five percent gray and the hair has to be sent in elastic bands.”

Sarah Fender is, a senior music education major, works closely with Jennifer as both her employee and student. She believes that her decision to donate her hair was a great one.

“I think that it was really cool that Dr. Flory and Bill were able to donate their hair to Locks of Love especially since they have both lost someone close to them to cancer,” Fender said. “Anyone would be lucky to have a wig made out of their gorgeous locks!”

Away from donating their hair, the couple also participates in the Purple Stride 5k Run/Walk every November on Tybee Island, Ga. Purple Stride is an organization that plans events to raise money towards the mission of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network to support patients and research for finding a cure to pancreatic cancer.

“Pancreatic cancer also took my grandmother so I am very invested in finding treatment or a diagnostic cure that will help with early detection so people can just have their pancreas removed,” Jennifer said. “I raised $2,565 personally, and my team raised a little more than $3,000.”

Posted by CourtneyCoile on Sep 22 2011. Filed under A&E. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.