William’s Warriors hosted its annual Chalk the Walk at Blue Point Nature Preserve this past Saturday. Community members came to support the organization and create chalk murals, which went to benefit pediatric cancer.

The event is in memory of William Schultz, a Blue Point Elementary School student who died from complications due to medulloblastoma, a form of pediatric brain cancer; he was 7 years old. 

The foundation created in his memory, William’s Warriors, provides art supplies and art kits to children fighting the disease; they also created a workbook to help children explore their feelings after diagnosis.

Chalk the Walk is meant to bring attention to pediatric cancer and raise money for the foundation and its mission to help children with cancer express themselves through art. Margaret Schultz, the mother of William Schultz, started the event in memory of her son.

“I was overwhelmed by grief and facing his first birthday. I felt compelled to do something—something in expression of his memory,” she said.

She thought of summer evenings with her son, drawing together with chalk in their backyard—and that’s when she decided to do the first Chalk Walk, in October of 2017, just nine months after William’s death.

“It’s turned into a celebration over these past five years,” she said.

And the reason the event has become so successful, she said, is community involvement, from the local businesses who sponsor the event, plus the residents, students and educators from the Bayport-Blue Point School District, who show up en force each year.

“I’ve worked in a number of different school districts. It amazes me how this community always pulls together and rises to the challenge, no matter what they’re facing. People step forward and try to help each other. And that doesn’t happen everywhere,” said Dr. Theodore Fulton, assistant superintendent of schools, Bayport-Blue Point School District

Each year the Chalk the Walk event is estimated to raise $10,000, but they always wind up raising more. Even last year, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they exceeded their fundraising goals—which is important, because the service William’s Warriors provides might otherwise go unfulfilled.

“Art supplies aren’t part of the budget and they need help keeping them in stock,” Margaret Schultz said of the hospitals they give supplies to.

William’s Warriors currently has 63 nationwide requests for its creative care packages, which are individually made by the foundation for each child they serve. In addition to the creative care packages, their goal is to make 80 art kits for local hospitals this year. They also make an “art cart” for Cohen Children’s Medical Center. Plus, their Halloween craft kits are slated to go out directly after the Chalk the Walk event.  

Frank Salino, an art teacher at Bayport-Blue Point High School, was present at the event and purchased two chalk squares. He said he understands the need for children to express themselves through art—in fact; it’s what he focuses on in his classroom each day.

“In my classroom, the goal isn’t to make student artists; the goal is to create a safe space where students can be creative and free. You can’t imagine all of the benefits of therapeutic art,” he said.