He saved every bug in the pool, and Maxine Dunn couldn’t help but notice.
The lifeguard was stricken by the kindness of the little towheaded boy when he showed up at Adams Playground for swimming lessons this summer.
“The first thing we would do was scoop up every bug in the pool so they wouldn’t get swept away,” Dunn recalled.
And as the summer progressed, Dunn knew she had to do the same for him. The boy, Gus Dreher of Peterborough, has Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy, a disease which is life-threatening and for which there is no cure.
“He’s in a race against time,” Dunn said.
Fortunately, he’s got an entire team on his side. After her summer teaching Dreher to swim, Dunn headed back to Hartwick College, where she’s a senior nursing student and captain of the field hockey team. She contacted her co-captains and told them about Dreher. Together, they formed a plan. The Hawks dedicated their season to Dreher and DMD awareness.
“The hope is to save not only Gus, but this entire generation of children suffering from DMD,” reads the team’s GoFundMe page.
The team is raising funds for the Hope For Gus foundation in two ways. One, the Hawks are taking one-time donations through their GoFundMe page (www.gofundme.com/wickhockey4gus). The other is what the Hawks have dubbed Goals For Gus. Interested donors can pledge $1, $5 – or any amount they feel comfortable with – for each goal the Hawks score this season. At the end of the year, the total goals will be tallied, pledges collected and funds delivered to Hope For Gus.
“It’s a cool way to keep us connected to people back home,” Dunn said. “And, it’s giving us an extra push, an extra drive to do well, to play better.”
After a junior year in which she didn’t score once, Dunn was already bent on putting the ball in the net in her final season. And with Dreher on her mind, she scored Hartwick’s first goal of the season in the Hawks’ 2-1 win against RPI on Sept. 1.
“It’s kind of igniting an extra bit of drive in all of us,” Dunn said. While she spent plenty of time with Dreher over the summer, helping him improve his swimming stroke – “he improved so much, it was awesome,” she said – the rest of the Hawks have yet to meet the 11-year-old who they’ve dedicated their season to. However, that will change on Saturday, when undefeated Hartwick hosts Brockport in a battle to stay atop the Empire-8 standings. Dreher will make the trip to the game and finally meet the team.
“I’m really excited for everyone to meet him,” Dunn said. “When you put a face to what you’re doing, that connection makes a difference.”