Blog

Dean Crowe: Because Kids Like Sarah Deserve More Time

Dean Crowe/LinkedIn

Jul 30, 2025, 14:51

Dean Crowe: Because Kids Like Sarah Deserve More Time

Dean Crowe, Founder and CEO of the Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“I miss her hugs.

I mean really, really miss her hugs.

They wrapped all the way around you — tight, long, and full of love. They didn’t need words. They were the words.

Sarah, who I called Presh, was a Rally Kid who faced Ewing sarcoma, a brutal bone cancer, with incredible grace, strength, and unwavering faith. She dreamed of a career in medicine, but her greatest hope was always in the Lord.

Sarah passed away in 2016 at just 19 years old.

It was both beautiful and heartbreaking to walk alongside her and her family as the relapses kept coming. Her legacy lives on in so many ways, including the Monarch Butterfly Award we present each year at Rally On the Runway.

Sarah painted a monarch butterfly, seeing its transformation as symbolic of the journey kids with cancer go through: from diagnosis to treatment, from suffering to hope.

She was right. It is a long, hard, and often uncertain journey. That award, which is a copy of her painting, is given to someone who truly is committed to that journey by helping Rally fulfill our mission.

July is Sarcoma and Bone Cancer Awareness Month. Sarcomas are aggressive, underfunded, and often overlooked. At Rally Foundation, we invest in research for all types of childhood cancer, including sarcomas, because kids like Sarah deserve more time — and more hugs.

Today, I’m remembering Presh.

Her light. Her courage.

And her unforgettable hugs.”

More posts featuring Dean Crowe.