Cari Long: A Journey Full Circle

by Ann K. Monteith

“There are no ordinary moments.” How many times had Cari Long heard Dr. William Magee, founder of Operation Smile, say this? Over the years, as their paths have crossed in different stages of her life, Cari had no way of knowing that someday a remarkable concordance of events would bring Dr. Magee’s words to life in a most personal way, as she prepared to photograph a timid new mother and her newborn baby in a clinic in Paraguay.

“There are no ordinary moments.” For Dr. Magee, who together with his wife, Kathy, founded Operation Smile in 1982, these five words have become the refrain through which he explains how a one-time medical mission to provide cleft lip and cleft palette surgeries to needy children in the Philippines ultimately blossomed into the world’s largest volunteer-based medical charity providing free facial surgeries, working in more than 60 countries.

To Dr. Magee, these words represented the phenomenon by which Operation Smile grew organically . . . as one person at a time would be moved by seeing children’s lives changed so profoundly through the gift of healing: Inspired by the power of these moments, they would pass on this vision to others, who themselves would want to help expand the organization’s reach.

Cari Connects With Operation Smile

Like the thousands of children Operation Smile has helped around the world, Cari was born with a cleft. But unlike so many children in the developing world, she received reconstructive surgery several months after birth as a matter of course. The tiny scar that remains is barely a footnote in Cari’s personal history: “It was never an issue in my growing up, she says.”

Following her graduation from North Carolina State University with a B.S. degree in biology, Cari pursued her M.S. degree in human genetics at the University of South Carolina. She then accepted a position as a genetics counselor at Norfolk Virginia’s Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters, where Dr. Magee maintained a Craniofacial Clinic. That is where they first crossed paths. “I got to know Dr. Magee through working with his patients at his clinic for several years,” she explained. By then she had started a family with her husband, Jason, that today includes son Keaton, age 17, and daughters Reece, 15, and Sasha, 10.

Several years later, when Jason’s pharmaceuticals job relocated the family to Northern Virginia, Cari worked in breast cancer genetics until Reece was born. “I didn’t want to have two kids in daycare,” she said “so I decided to stay home with them and take a few photography classes at a local community college.” Cari credits her interest in both biology and photography to her father, a biology teacher and a hobbyist in photography. “I learned a lot about photography from my dad, she said, “as I loved printing in his dark room with him.”

While living in Virginia, Cari reconnected with Dr. Magee, when she and Jason journeyed to Norfolk so that he could perform surgery on two-year-old Reece, who had a benign tumor under her eye that would not stop bleeding. When Jason’s job responsibilities took the family to North Carolina in 2002, the possibility that Cari would once again cross paths with Dr. Magee might have been unlikely, had it not been for her decision to open a photography business. Neither Cari nor Dr. Magee could have guessed that ten years later, both would reach for those five magic words to describe a very special encounter that would take place during an Operation Smile mission to Asunción, Paraguay. Continue reading →

PPA Charities President David Grupa has announced the results of the organization’s annual Celebration of Smiles fundraiser in support of its charitable partner, Operation Smile. Held during April, a total of 79 members raised $52,53 to benefit Operation Smile.

“These funds will go a long way toward meeting our 2012 goal of raising $100,000 for this wonderful organization,” Grupa said. “Because Operation Smile’s medical professionals and support staff volunteer their services, it costs only $240 to provide a simple cleft lip surgery to a child in desperate need. Therefore the funds raised by PPA members so far in 2013 mean that over 200 smiles will be saved.”

The annual Celebration of Smiles Day campaign provides consumers with the opportunity to receive a mini-session and a 5×7 professional portrait in exchange for a donation to Operation Smile of only $24; therefore, for every 10 sessions photographed by a participating studio, another smile can be saved by the volunteer staff of Operation Smile.

In 2014 PPA Charities will advertise Saturday, April 5 as the official Celebration of Smiles date, but studios can hold their events on any other date or dates in April for their convenience.

Top donors for the 2013 campaign are Ryan & Erica Manthey, Pure 7 Studios, Miramar Beach, FL, who contributed $6,131. Last year Pure 7 Studio also was the campaign’s top performer with a donation of $3,813.

In addition to the Mantheys, the Top Tier donors, who contributed $500 or more, are:

In addition to the studios listed above, the studios shown below attained the honor of being designated as an “Operation Smile Studio” for having donated at least $240 dollars, the amount needed to fund a single surgery through Operation Smile. Those individuals and studios are:

During this year’s April 28-May 13 Texas School session, generous students and instructors, as well as the Texas School Trustees, chose to support PPA Charities by challenging each other to give as much as they could to support the philanthropic arm of PPA, whose partner is Operation Smile, the international medical charity that repairs cleft lips and cleft palettes of needy children around the world. Their combined efforts, netted PPACH a contribution of $25,000 bringing the total of donations made by Texas School students, instructors and trustees, over a five-year period, to $113,070!

The top “Challenge” donation of $1,905 was made by attendees of the class taught by Lori Nordstrom, and the following classes donated $1,000 or more: Greg and Lesa Daniel, David and Luke Edmondson, Kay Eskridge, Hanson Fong, Mike Fulton and Cody Clinton, Elizabeth and Trey Homan, Gary and Kathy Meek,

How It All Got Started . . .

Texas School is the largest of all PPA Affiliate Schools in the country, and this year the week-long event drew over 1,000 students from throughout the U.S. and abroad. The tradition of PPA Charities fundraising at Texas School began spontaneously in 2008, when a few instructors, who were familiar with PPACH’s support Operation Smile, encouraged their class members to donate. This effort culminated at the Thursday evening all-school party when school director Don Dixon offered to shave his head if the donation could grow to $5000. It did, and Don lost his hair!

In 2009, Texas School instructors encouraged their classes to buy as many smiles as they could by playing an Operation Smile video so that students could learn how this organization’s incredible volunteers can perform life-changing surgery for a desperately needy child for only $240. Jed and Vicki Taufer’s class alone donated an amazing $7,300 for individual contributions and auctions of merchandise and private classes by Jed and Vicki. Their donation, along with those from other classes, along with an impromptu auction of donated vendor items, resulted in a $17,000 contribution to Operation Smile!

Since then, donating to PPA Charities and Operation Smiles has become a tradition at Texas School. The 2014 edition of Texas School will be held in Dallas on April 27 – May 2. For information on Texas School, click here.