Chapel Hill Fire Department holds Pink Heals parade

The Chapel Hill Fire Department had no trouble clearing Franklin Street Friday for a parade of flashing, hot pink fire trucks carrying firefighters in pink uniforms to match.

Pink Heals, a women’s health issues fundraising organization, came to Chapel Hill to raise money and awareness for their cause. The parade began at UNC Hospitals and traveled through campus in the rain to 140 West, where founder Dave Graybill spoke about his organization’s mission.

Founded in 2007, Graybill said Pink Heals tours nationwide with its volunteers, selling merchandise to raise money for women and visiting hospitals to spend time with those battling cancer.

“If you see our program as a health care program, you get my message,” he said.

Chapel Hill Fire Chief Dan Jones said the department decided four years ago to make cancer research the department’s charity, after several employees and their family members were diagnosed with cancer.

Since then, fire Capt. Byron Greeson said their fundraising efforts have raised more than $8,000 for the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Greeson said he heard about Pink Heals and thought its tour had a place in Chapel Hill.

“Talking with coworkers, just about everybody in Chapel Hill has had a family member, or themselves have been, affected by cancer,” Greeson said.

“I had heard of the pink fire trucks, went to their website, filled out a request, figured it’d end up in an email dumpster somewhere — and that afternoon I got a call from Dave Graybill.”

Despite the rain, Friday’s parade attracted a crowd of roughly 50 people.

Meg McGurk, the executive director of the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership, said the parade was held as a precursor for Turn the Town Pink — another fundraiser for the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center this fall.

Pink Heals started its local advocacy last year with its Triad Chapter, which is led by Winston-Salem firefighter Chuck Goins and works with fire departments in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill.

Goins said he chose to bring Pink Heals to his area after his emotional experience on tour in the summer of 2012.

“The outpouring of love that we show to the women in these communities, and then the love they give back, that was what drove me to want to go home and start a chapter,” he said. “I’m looking even now toward retiring so I can come back on tour and do this with my free time.”

Firefighter Dusty Wilkins and his wife Tonya , who was diagnosed with — and beat — stage IV colon cancer at age 28, said they have volunteered with the Triad Chapter since it began.

“Just because (the women are) seeing that there are people out there that actually do care about them, and want to give love to them — that might make them think, ‘I need to fight harder or be stronger to get through this,‘” Tonya Wilkins said.

Breast cancer survivor Debbie Stoll was among the crowd Friday — she said this was her first public cancer awareness event.

“It’s definitely powerful. And also, to know this organization was started by guys, firemen of all people, because it does affect everybody,” Stoll said. “And I think people don’t see that. They just see it being very pink.”

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