Smashing Walnuts’ gala for Gabriella draws hundreds
More than 400 people turned up fashionably at the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner March 7 to honor a young girl from Loudoun who seized their hearts in her too-short 10 years.
The second annual Smashing Walnuts Cracking the Cure Gala honoring the late Gabriella Miller of Leesburg gathered tears, laughter and $200,000 dedicated to finding a cure for childhood cancer, the culprit of Gabriella's death in October 2013.
Current and former NFL players were in attendance – including the ogled-at all-star Ryan Kerrigan of the Washington Redskins – as were a U.S. senator and Broadway star.
But no attendee captivated the crowd like Gabriella, her face beaming on projector screens in the ballroom.
“One of my fears is that more really young children are going to die, and I don't want that,” Gabriella said in a documentary clip flashed at the gala. “My fear is that I'm going to die … If I go, if I lose my battle, I'm going to want other people to carry on with the war. They're going to win this war.”
Dr. Javad Nazarian of the Children's National Health System and a leading childhood cancer researcher poignantly addressed the crowd, noting the long road ahead for cancer research, specifically DIPG, the type of tumor that struck Gabriella.
Smashing Walnuts pledged its inaugural grant of $100,000 to Nazarian last August.
“With the Miller’s commitment to study childhood brain cancers and your support we have already made strides toward identifying the molecular basis of DIPG cells,” Nazarian said. “Today, we know more about this deadly childhood disease than we knew just 12 months ago.”
But sadly, the doctor continued, “the prognosis of a child diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma is exactly the same today as it was in 1962, when President Kennedy set his sights on the moon. We have landed a man on the moon, mapped the depth of oceans, the distant stars and galaxies, yet our knowledge of what really happens merely 3 centimeters under the skull – within the brain of a child with DIPG – remains the same.”
Mark and Ellyn Miller, Gabriella's parents and the founders of Smashing Walnuts, donated their daughter's brain to Nazarian for research on DPIG.
Initial tallies showed Smashing Walnuts raised more than $200,000 during the gala, which included a silent and live auction, a speech from U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and a performance from J. Mark McVey, a Broadway singer from the performance of “Les Miserables.” Gabriella was enamored with all things Paris, taking a trip the City of Lights in her final year.
Sen. Kaine, Virginia's senior Sen. Mark Warner (D) and former U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) were instrumental in securing funding for the now-signed Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act that redirects more than $120 million for childhood cancer research over the next decade.
“As long as the republic stands, Gabriella's name is written into it and will never be forgotten,” Mark Miller told the crowd March 7.
Part of Gabriella's final-year advocacy included calling attention to the fact less than 5 percent of federal cancer research funding is dedicated to childhood cancers.
“Less and less kids are going to have their childhood if people don't raise awareness and raise funds,” Gabriella told the crowd from the big screen.
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