PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Sunday marked the last day of the Tom Coughlin Jay Fund’s Remembrance Weekend, an event in Ponte Vedra Beach bringing families that have lost a child to cancer together to show that they aren’t alone.
Coughlin is the former head coach of the Jaguars and more recently was one of the team’s top executives.
The Jay Fund was made in honor of Jay McGillis who developed leukemia while on Coughlin’s Boston College team.
Now, for the last 25 years, the organization has worked to help families with children battling cancer.
Families and siblings filled the Arbor Ballroom Sunday for a candle-lit vigil remembering those they lost to childhood cancer.
Jake Berglund loved to be a mascot.
“Just very full of life energetic high energy. He was just a really special kid,” Gracie Berglund, Jake’s sister, said.
Berglund said he was very involved in the Yulee community.
“I think you would be really proud,” Berglund said.
But at just 13 years old he was diagnosed with a form of leukemia.
“It was just a roller coaster of emotions highs and lows. We didn’t really know what was coming during his treatment. And then he relapsed in March 2020 and passed less than a month later and it was really unexpected to us,” Berglund said.
Four years later, the emotions of that time are still there.
“I don’t think that it gets easier, but I think it becomes more manageable, especially having the support and continued support from organizations like the Jay Fund,” Berglund said.
Shelby Skipper, program manager and child life specialist with the Tom Coughlin Jay Fund Program, talked about their work’s impact on families dealing with a cancer diagnosis.
“I think that childhood cancer is such an isolating diagnosis because I’ve heard so many families tell me ‘It’s like the world just completely stops and then it has to keep going because life keeps going,’ and having someone walk alongside you in that journey, that understands exactly what it’s like it just makes the burden a little more easy to bear for families,” Skipper said.
The weekend of events puts siblings in rooms with other siblings and parents with other parents, working with each other to process their grief and share their stories.
“I think it would just be embracing him with a big hug. I believe when we get there time really won’t matter. It’ll be like we never were apart. I’m not sure what those words would be,” Berglund said.
Sunday’s events ended in a butterfly release.
News4JAX was told by a Tom Coughlin Jay Fund spokesperson that they hope to have a similar remembrance weekend up in New York where Coughlin was the coach of the Giants.
For ways to get involved with the Jay Fund visit this website. If you want to get help with the Jay Fund visit this website.