Northern Michigan Voices is a series by 9&10 News reporter Olivia Fellows in which she interviews a person in the community about a story from their life. Everyone has an interesting story to tell, and we want to give you a voice, Northern Michigan! To submit your own story pitch, see the bottom of this article for more details.
In this edition, Olivia talks to Tom Ezdebski, a Ludington recreation coach and the pioneer of can drives and events which have raised hundreds of thousands in funds for local families with children facing cancer on behalf of the nonprofit the Childhood Cance Campaign.
Hear from Ezdebski on what inspired his efforts and how he uses his work to help inspire the next generation during the school year alongside students.
Q: Tell me a bit about yourself and your background?
EZDEBSKI: I’m the treasurer of the Childhood Cancer Campaign and I’ve lived in Wellington most of my life. I went to Ferris State and majored in accounting, after I got my degree there I came back home. I am married now, and my wife is Patricia. She is the president of the Childhood Cancer Campaign. I’ve been a rec sports coach and I’ve done that for I think going on about 35 years now. I’ve now coached 103 teams in different sports, and I enjoy doing that. I have three kids of my own, and also two stepkids.
Q: what inspired you to want to start working with people in your community to do these fundraisers, and what is the ultimate goal?
EZDEBSKI: The can drive started as part of the Childhood Cancer Campaign, and we help families in this area like in Manistee Mason, Oceana and Lake counties. If a family has a child with cancer, then we try to assist them with whatever they might need. We don’t pay medical bills, but we help with utilities and car payments, mortgage payments, especially gas for trips back and forth to Grand Rapids because everybody goes there from here, and we do have a family right now that’s going to Ann Arbor as well. All those costs add up.
When I was working as treasurer for the city of Ludington during COVID and in April of 2021, one of my coworkers saw something on Facebook that some group somewhere else in Michigan had started the can drive and she said, ‘Well, that might be a good idea for you. And I thought about it, said, yeah, that probably would be a good thing for us to do. At the time, there was an order from the governor for a few months, people could not take back the cans and bottles and people couldn’t return them, so we started collecting.
I was at that time, I was hoping we could probably get the $500 worth of cans and bottles. Didn’t know when we’d be able to start returning them back then it actually took about two or three months before we could start returning them.
We’ve been doing cans and bottles ever since then. We are almost, at 1.1 million cans of bottles right now, and have raised around $110,000.
Q: What has it been like for you working with students and the community and does what it mean to the students and yourself to work on important drives to support such an important initiative?
EZDEBSKI: Yes it’s not just students. They say it takes a village, but it truly has been an area-wide program where we get cans and bottles from so many people that I don’t even know. Almost every day we will have people dropping off cans here and we have several businesses that we get cans from as well.
It’s been a village effort to get to this many cans of bottles and we do have some programs that the schools in the area have done for us. We just recently had the Ludington volleyball team do a fundraising night for us. The Mason County Eastern volleyball team also just did a fundraising night for us. I know the Ludington basketball team is going to be doing that with the boys sometime in January. It’s been a total community effort, and when we always say that the childhood cancer campaign doesn’t work without the community’s involvement that’s a fact.
Without them, it wouldn’t work. We were just recently voted the best local charity through the local newspaper here.
Q: What lessons do you hope they take away from participating in giving back to their communities in this way?
EZDEBSKI: I think students and other people can see well that what we do for these families really is important, and they really appreciate what we do. In fact, on our board of directors, we have several people who are from families of children that we’ve helped in the past. This is kind of their way of helping us and kind of giving back. They saw how much it meant to them, and they wanted to help others do the same thing.
Q: Do you have any specific memories that you’d like to share from any of the drives or events that highlight the impact of your efforts and the impact on the people that you’ve supported?
EZDEBSKI: Many memories from the cans and bottles, because it’s been so many. One of the funny things was that right when we started collecting cans and bottles in 2020 during COVID and everybody was stressed out, I had three people tell me the same phrase at different times. They said, ‘Well, please don’t judge me, because there are a lot of beer cans’ and so on.
I thought, ‘Well, I’m not gonna judge you. You’re giving me money, basically, so I’m not gonna judge you.’ When I take these cans back to the store, I don’t even know whose they are. I don’t keep track like that.
The childhood cancer campaign has been going on for 20 years now, and one of our main events is we have a lemonade stand day on the first Saturday in June every year, and that’s our signature event. I think now we are almost more known from the cannon bottle return fundraiser. I think people seem to be amazed by that, and kind of taken by that. We’re so grateful for all the help.
Q: What do you think initiatives like yours say about the importance of the local community and encouraging people to give back, even in the small act of donating cans?
EZDEBSKI: This community is an extremely generous one, and not just with cans and bottles, but also with the donations that we received from them monetarily. We also have other groups that are knitting blankets and hats for us and gloves. This community is just unreal, and we’ve had from the local schools, we’ve had many programs help us. We have a group of teenagers in a group, they’re called the fudgy friends. They make fudge in different sweet treats for us and we got those as fundraisers.
We have another one coming up for Christmas, and young kids doing all that they do all the work. In fact, during our lemonade stand in June every year and we’ve had almost 20 now, we would often have people come up and say they had cancer when they were younger, or they knew somebody that had cancer and they were donating in memory of that person. It’s extremely moving to hear their stories and to know that, hopefully, we are affecting families in this area that are going through that struggle right now.
Currently, we’re helping 8 families as they go through this journey, from beginning to however long it takes. It’s very rewarding and I think people can see that, and it’s very necessary. I know people know that too.
Q: For the students you coach do you see yourself as kind of an example to them in how to be a leader in your community and learn what what impact giving back has, especially given your working very locally with local organizations and businesses?
EZDEBSKI: I would hope so. I don’t do it for that reason, but if people see me that way, I would be very appreciative of that. Although I told somebody the other day, ‘I think when I pass away, my obituary is going to say the can man.’ I guess there are worse things to be known for than that, and if people see me that way that’s an honor, that’s pretty awesome.
Q: Do you have any advice for other individuals who might be interested in getting initiatives started like this to give back to their communities, and is there anything that has helped you along the way to build your campaigns and the events that you do to fundraise?
EZDEBSKI: All of this couldn’t be done without my wife. She actually started the program about 20 years ago now, because she had cancer when she was in her 20s. She wasn’t a child, but she was pretty young. I didn’t know her at the time, so when she was going to start this, she said, ‘I’m hesitant to do this, but will you help me?’ I said yes, although I was nervous about it too and unsure of how we could or what we could do to help these families.
If anybody wanted to do anything volunteer or create a program, I would say go ahead and do it. Don’t be afraid, you’re going to have a few pitfalls here and there. It is going to be a lot of work, but the rewards are far greater than the work that you’re going to do. It can be extremely emotional, we have had six young people pass away, so when I say it’s been rewarding, we’ve had some pretty dark times as well but that drives us to keep going and to continue on. We think about those six kids every day.
Q: What are your goals for the future, and do you have any ideas for changes or expansion in terms of your work in giving back?
EZDEBSKI: Our goals for the future are to ensure that this program will be out there for anyone who needs help in this area and that the money will be there so that any child who’s diagnosed with cancer in this area will be taken care of from now until forever. That’s our goal. Obviously, that takes a lot of money, but we’ve been at it for 20 years and we’re going to continue to go on. We are 501(C3) and do have a board and those people are going to be here after we can’t do this anymore, they’re going to be the ones that carry it forward and go on into the future with it.
If anybody has any questions or would like to start a program in their area, we’d be glad to help. Our very first fundraiser started as a program of the local Optimist Club here in Ludington. We had these little piggy banks, and we asked the members to give us 10 cents a day for a few months and that was like the first fundraiser. Since then, we’ve had many, many fundraisers. Ideally, there is enough money where you don’t have to continue to fundraise all the time but we’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting follows. Our goal is to ensure that this program is going to be there from now into forever. We want to take care of these families.
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Have an interesting story of your own? Email Olivia and provide a brief summary of your story, and we will contact you if we’d like to tell your tale. We’re interested in all sorts of stories, too! Sad, happy, exhilarating, inspiring or educational— we’d like to know about your story and share it with the community!
Note: We will ask for photos as well (or take one if possible), it helps immensely if you can have pictures ready.