From Friendship to Legacy: Dan McLoughlin on Honoring Joe Gorman’s Memory
Meet Dan McLoughlin, graduate of Loyola Blakefield (‘14) and one of the childhood friends of Joe Gorman, the inspiration behind the Join for Joe movement.
When Joe Gorman was diagnosed in 2008 with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, he needed a bone marrow donation to live. After some discussion of how we could help, the Join for Joe movement was founded, and the original Join for Joe bone marrow drive was held.
The original Join for Joe drive was a spectacular event. The community surrounding Joe was able to register almost 900 new potential donors to the bone marrow donation registry. “There’s something about the word cancer and the general public that just mobilizes you,” says Dan, when asked about the turnout at Joe’s drive.
Over the years, Dan has kept in touch with There Goes My Hero and volunteered for countless TGMH drives and programs. A few weeks ago, Dan stopped by the office to reminisce about his friend, Joe Gorman, and how Joe still serves as an inspiration to him. One memory that stood out to Dan was the story of Joe’s hats.
When Joe was going through chemotherapy, he began losing all his hair. Losing your hair at any point in your life, let alone being a child, is difficult to process. “That’s kind of a huge piece of your identity you don’t know you have until you don’t have it” says Dan. To support Joe, the Loyola Blakefield school administration made around 100 baseball hats with the school logo on the front and Joe’s name on the back. It became routine that the entire student body started wearing these hats when Joe was in the building. The bust of Saint Ignatius of Loyola even sported one of Joe’s hats for years after Joe’s unfortunate passing in 2011.
The hats stood out to Dan because of the overwhelming amount of support they were able to give Joe. Dan says the hats were able to “provide some level of hope to give a kid an experience or level of happiness to come [to school] with a smile on their face.”
Joe’s hats showed an infectious amount of support throughout the community and made coming to school without hair easier for Joe. Dan’s memories of Joe and the support of their community remind us of the importance of making a difference.
You can make a difference too—join the Bone Marrow Registry today and be the hope someone needs. Visit the link in our bio to learn how you can become a donor and potentially save a life.