University of Georgia Athletics
Former UGA Volleyball Player Starts Charity
August 31, 2012 | Volleyball
Aug. 31, 2012
ATHENS, Ga. --- Lenore Davis never expected to be baking cupcakes every day of the week. But after starting a cupcake catering company, that's exactly what the former UGA volleyball player is doing. Lightning Cupcakes, Davis' business, is something she started doing to help raise money for the Healing Hunter Foundation, which strives to fight childhood cancers one smile at a time through random acts of kindness.
Davis, a Williamsville, N.Y., native, lettered for the Bulldogs from 1990-94. She and her husband, Zen, also run the Healing Hunter Foundation, which is in memory of their son, Hunter, who lost his battle to cancer at the age of three. Davis started the foundation because she felt the need to contribute to other families whose children were fighting cancer.
"Once you lose a child, you’re left with this very intense and powerful pain that you deal with every second of every day," said Davis. "You have to go somewhere. You either go toward the darkness or towards healing in a positive, healthy, and nurturing way. Zen and I decided together, as a unit, that we had to go towards the light, because otherwise we wouldn't survive. It’s just too hard.
"That’s when I started feeling the need to go up to the hospital where we spent so much time because that’s where I felt really close to Hunter. There were so many delicate feelings and emotions among those walls there in the hospital for me. On any given day, there are children in that hospital just fighting for their lives. When you think about that, I just knew that I wanted to help and make some sort of a positive, powerful impact to help them since we had been through the experience."
The Healing Hunter foundation regularly donates Visa gift cards and toys to the families of children battling cancer, in addition to taking on some larger projects. Along with transforming the children's cancer floor at Doernbecher Children's Hospital into a Dr. Seuss winter wonderland at Christmas, the Healing Hunter Foundation has begun a yearly tradition of donating 25 iPods to childhood cancer patients at Doernbecher.
“One of the biggest projects that we’ve had that has received the most press and surprise among families was when we delivered the iPods," Davis continued. "Hunter had his own iPod, and it was amazing how he could manipulate this iPod better than most adults could. He knew how to access YouTube to access all of his favorite Lightning McQueen videos, and without that iPod, it would have just made everything so much darker. We had it when we went through x-rays, bone scans, and blood transfusions so that he could constantly be entertained and taken away to whatever world he chose with his iPod. That became huge for us, and so on his birthday each year, each kid fighting cancer at Doernbecher gets an iPod touch."
Davis began Lightning Cupcakes as a small way to increase the funds of the Healing Hunter Foundation, and it has become larger than she had imagined.
“That took off like wildfire," Davis said. "Right now, we’ve converted our home kitchen into a commercial kitchen. So we have five ovens installed, and I basically bake like crazy every week! It’s something that I never thought I’d do. I graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in Public Relations and Consumer Journalism, so for me to own a cupcake company and be slammed every week baking cupcakes was nothing that I ever thought was in store for me.
"I’m constantly just trying to catch up and figure out what the next step is, but we just stay so busy baking," Davis continued. "Our biggest attempt right now is to get a cupcake truck. We’re reaching out to sponsors and donors to contribute to a cupcake truck, but it’s also going to be a Healing Hunter foundation delivery truck because the amount of toys that we take to the hospital for the toy drive is huge.”
One thing that continues to stand out in Davis' mind is how supportive her former UGA volleyball teammates have been. When Hunter was battling cancer, Davis' teammates not only supported and encouraged her, but they also held fundraisers and helped search for doctors for Hunter.
"Almost every single teammate found me and reached out to me by offering support and encouragement," said Davis. "It was just all of these surprise appearances from all of these awesome people from the past at Georgia. I truly did appreciate that connection, and they actually got me through a lot. That has been a sisterhood that embraced me tremendously and gave me a lot of strength and a lot of appreciation for my days at Georgia. I’m very fond of the athletic institution that exists there because it’s amazing. It was when I went through it, and it still is today. It definitely is the relationships that I truly cherish.”
To learn more about the Healing Hunter Foundation and Davis' story, please visit www.healinghunterfoundation.blogspot.com.
