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Hundreds will run down Park Avenue in Houma this weekend for the sake of local mothers and infants who need help the most.
John and Ashley Fontenot are hosting the 11th annual Super Cooper 5K this Saturday. The race begins and ends at Pinocchio’s Pizza Playhouse on Prevost Drive in Houma. Registration begins at 7 a.m., a one mile fun run begins at 8 a.m. and the 5K starts immediately after that.
The race builds up money for the Cooper Life Fund, which benefits families with children in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Terrebonne General Medical Center. The money raised goes toward gift baskets for any family entering the NICU containing diapers, baby wipes, gas cards and other goods as well as a personalized note from the Fontenots.
John and Ashley started the fund after their own son, Cooper, was born in November 2005 with transposition of the great arteries, a rare birth defect in which the two main arteries in the heart are reversed. Cooper had open-heart surgery to re-route his arteries at just nine days old. Given a six-to-eight week recovery, he managed to recover in just three weeks. Today he lives a healthy, normal life, albeit one where he cannot play his beloved sport of tackle football.
John said the gas cards in the gift baskets are particularly valuable because they could be the difference of a parent seeing his or her child multiple times a week while in the NICU, giving them time together that is critical for both. He said the gift baskets and the connections created are meant to show those going through something so surprising and challenging that there is light at the end of the tunnel and support to help them get there.
“You don’t ever expect it, which is quite a shock. There’s no classes you can take on what you can do when it happens; you just kind of have to go with the flow,” John said. “So what we do is we try to help those parents who are experiencing that and kind of let them know that they’re not alone, that many people have gone through this and they’re baby’s come out perfectly healthy and fine. Cooper’s a great example of that because he’s healthy and he can run and he can do just about anything any other normal kid can do, so there’s hope and there’s silver linings, and we just want the families to know that.”
