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CoSIDA Goodwill & Wellness Committee
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Communicators Outside the Lines Feature Series
This is the next profile in a series entitled
Communicators Outside the Lines: Better Yourself, Better Your Community produced by the CoSIDA Goodwill & Wellness Committee. Read past profiles at
CoSIDA.com/CommunicatorsOTL.
WE NEED YOUR IDEAS!
If you have any ideas for this series, which will revolve around CoSIDA member volunteerism and health and wellness, please contact Goodwill and Wellness Committee chair
Chris Mitchell, Washington University in St. Louis Assistant AD for Communications, at (618) 560-9280 or
mitchell@wustl.edu.
Q&A with Greg Pellegrino
Holy Family University, Director of Sports Information
by Kevin Maloney – Jones College, Assistant AD for Sports Information
CoSIDA Goodwill and Wellness Committee member
The dictionary defines “hero” as “a person of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his or her brave deeds and noble qualities.” Heroes come in many forms in life, ranging from one’s family and friends to athletes and movie stars.
Who among us is truly worthy of being called a hero?
We are more inclined to relate heroism to wealth, power and fame than to the attributes the dictionary outlines, like helping those less fortunate by sacrificing our time, money and possessions.
Two people who are certainly worthy of the title are
Greg Pellegrino and his wife Mary. They are heroes in every sense of the word.
In April of 2013, the couple was excited to hear they were having their first child, a baby boy. Six months into the pregnancy, Mary began to experience pain in her chest and had a suspicion that something was wrong. With a blood pressure of 166/110, she was admitted to Abington Hospital with HELLP Syndrome. She was only 25 weeks along in her pregnancy when Bennett was born, weighing in at 1 lb 2 oz and 12 inches long. He was considered a micro preemie.
Bennett was transported to the NICU at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (*CHOP), where, for the next seven and a half months, Mary and Greg prayed at his bedside while Bennett fought to live. It was the most difficult time of their lives. Five surgeries, interventions and thousands of prayers later, Bennett was discharged and ready to come home.
Gallery: (4/22/2020) Greg and Mary Pellegrino, BennettStrong
Their trials and tribulations of a pregnancy and the fight shown by Greg, Mary and Bennett encouraged them to start the BennettStrong Foundation on August 24, 2016. Almost four years later, their foundation is thriving and helping thousands of families just like theirs.
Before any of this, Pellegrino got his start in sports information as a work study student at Mansfield University under Steve McCloskey and later accepted an internship at Skidmore College with Bill Jones. His first full-time gig was as the Director of Media Relations at the Northeast-10 Conference from 2007-10.
Currently in his 10th year as the Director of Sports Information at Holy Family University, Pellegrino is a one-man shop and the primary contact for all 14 NCAA Division II sponsored sports. Among various other tasks, Pellegrino is responsible for the website,
athletics.holyfamily.edu, where he oversaw the initial launch in 2010 and re-launch in January 2015. He was also an integral part in the creation of the new athletic logo and reestablishment of the department’s social media platforms.
A sports information director by trade, Pellegrino has been in the field for 14 years now, and his wife, Mary, is a special education teacher. But it’s what the couple does outside of work that makes them heroes.
Q: What gave you and Mary the initial idea to start the BennettStrong Foundation?
Pellegrino: Prior to Bennett’s third birthday, he was diagnosed with liver cancer and so we returned to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for that. It was that summer that Mary and I began talking about starting a foundation for the NICU. There were a ton of foundations that came to our aid while we were in the hospital for his cancer treatment, but there wasn’t anything like that specifically for the NICU. We formed BennettStrong in 2017 in Warrington, Pennsylvania, when we officially got our 501c3 certification.
Q: What fundraising events do you have and where does the money raised for the foundation help primarily?
Pellegrino: Our big event is our annual black-tie optional Gala. We just had our third annual event in February and the money raised goes to our project we have at CHOP’s NICU, which is Parent Survival Kits. It’s a project we’ve worked on for the past three years, and so far, we’ve raised $32,000 towards the project. We also have a baseball game every summer in conjunction with the Philadelphia Phillies in addition to social media and online campaigns. All told, BennettStrong has helped raise nearly $70,000 in the last four years.
Q: Where do you hold your annual Gala and who all helps out?
Pellegrino: This past February was our largest, with over 150 people, and most profitable gala yet at the Northampton Valley Country Club in Richboro, Pennsylvania. Each year, at least one table is sponsored and reserved for social workers and psychologists at CHOP. Holy Family student-athletes have also really embraced the event, and each year, SAAC runs everything from the silent auction, to helping the photographers, raffle tickets, prizes, decorations and more. The fourth annual gala is set for February 27, 2021 at The Warrington.
Q: What does a NICU Parent Survival Kit entail?
Pellegrino: We talked to the psychologists at CHOP that worked specifically with NICU families and we gave them a list of the things that we thought families needed. We were so thankful for keeping a journal in the NICU, and again when Bennett was in oncology, that it just clicked that those coping skills and things that we do so naturally are skills and tools that may not be readily available to other patients and families. They may have not had that bonding with another parent or have the money and resources to provide a hands-free pumping bra, water bottle, journal or our “helping hearts.” They handled the feedback extremely well, and together with the social workers and psychologists, we developed the survival kits.
Q: How did the idea come about to keep a journal in the survival kit?
Pellegrino: So when [Mary] was in the hospital and Bennett was just born in the NICU, there was a parent who met with us and talked about coping skills and things that we needed to get through the NICU. One of the big things they talked about was self-care and a journal to find a way to break down your day and remember the times that you’re having. It was a great way to chronicle your story and cope with everyday life in the NICU. We took the words from that family to heart and started a NICU journal (Mary did most of the journaling). Bennett was discharged in January 2014 by the same doctor who admitted him and [Mary] just remember her saying to us that on the first morning she met us [Mary] looked so tired standing outside his room before 7 a.m. but so determined with her journal and pen.
Q: Have you discussed with the hospital to add more to the survival kits?
Pellegrino: We’re trying to include things like meal vouchers and have catered meals brought to the units, so parents don’t have to leave their bedside. In our dream world, we want to create a room on the unit where parents can have a full-size kitchen, make their own meals, sit on a couch and watch TV and just relax and be a family without having to leave their baby.
Q: With a pandemic going on worldwide, how has that affected your foundation?
Pellegrino: Since we are partnering with CHOP, they provide the materials with our blessings and guidance. So, we really just work behind the scenes and don’t come face-to-face with a family. The NICU is fully stocked with our kits, and even though the pandemic is going on, it hasn’t stopped our work.
Starting last summer, every family that is admitted to the NICU at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is given a 5x7 journal and a pen, courtesy of the BennettStrong Foundation. Inside the journal is a sticker with some language on it of how they can use the journal. Over 2,000 have been distributed over the last year.
The Pellegrino’s run a volunteer donation program where people can make the aforementioned “helping hearts” for the survival kits. It’s just a piece of cotton-flannel fabric in the shape of a heart. They also go to new nurses during their orientation period at CHOP. For mom and baby, the fabric heart smell of the baby would come home with the parent and the scent of the mother would stay at the hospital when the child was swaddled. The whole goal of the heart is to help with the bonding process.
Phase Two of the project is underway with a $25,000/five-year program with CHOP to guarantee the delivery of the journals and hearts. Behind the scenes, the Pellegrino’s are working with psychologists and social workers to determine what needs to be added to the parent survival kits and how they are currently being used. It’s becoming a part of the culture at the hospital and parent and staff training.
In a time of need and crisis across our country, the Pellegrino’s are doing even more by taking on a side project that has come about in the last week.
With the news breaking that states are competing for medical supplies, facemasks and ventilators, they put an all-call out on their BennettStrong social media and ended up connecting and partnering with a friend of a friend in California who owns a company called Brave Gowns.
“I’m really close with a lot of the NICU nurses and do a lot of speaking engagements in hospitals and national professional organizations,” Mary said. “Through our mutual friends I connected with Natalie Nowroozi whose family is also a CHOP family. Her son is battling brain cancer and she shares their family journey through Victory4Vincent. We were able come together with Brave Gowns, a company that makes hospital gowns for pediatric patients. Brave Gowns is now making antimicrobial masks that are rewashable and made on the type of fabric that’s safe for patients, families and healthcare workers fighting the coronavirus.”
The Pellegrino’s, in conjunction with Victory4Vincent and Brave Gowns, are currently hosting a Sponsor a Mask Program on their foundation website, and for nine dollars, you can purchase a mask that will be shipped to them and then, in turn, will be delivered to CHOP and into the hands of healthcare workers.
The campaign has caught on quickly, with A Wish Come True dance company donating 1,000 masks and another group, who is making face shields and hospital gowns, delivering stuff to their foundation and into the hands of CHOP. They’ve had about 3,200 masks delivered and nearly 2,000 face shields on the way.
Heroic love isn’t boring, taken for granted, or dishonest. It is the kind of love you commit to every day, both because you treasure it enormously, and because it is the agent of fulfillment in your life. Who you are, how you grow, becomes perfectly entwined with the heart of another. The Pellegrino’s have given everyone an admirable example of what true heroes look like.
To learn more about BennettStrong Foundation and to give or get involved, visit
BennettStrong.org.
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