When Luca Holmes learned he was being excused from school on Wednesday, he was fretful.
The 5-year-old feared it would be yet another in a seemingly endless number of dreaded visits to the doctor.
But this day was different.
His parents assured him that Wednesday morning promised a big surprise for him, and when a group of Horry County police officers arrived at his house on motorcycles with blue lights flashing to provide an escort to his destination, the anticipation began to build.
After Luca and his motorcade rolled into Myrtlewood Golf Club, a throng of waiting supporters and 144 golfers set to play in a charity golf outing to benefit Make-A-Wish South Carolina had a message in unison for him: his wish to go to Disney World with his family had been granted.
The Holmes family of Myrtle Beach is receiving an all-expenses-paid trip for a full week beginning Oct. 30 at the self-dubbed “happiest place on earth.” They are going while Disney World features the Nightmare Before Christmas theme, which is when Luca, who has been battling leukemia, wanted to go.
The granting of the wish is courtesy of the Myrtlewood Senior Men’s Golf Association, which adopted the Make-A-Wish charity a few years ago and began inviting the general public to its fundraising tournament last year. Wednesday’s tournament was held on Myrtlewood’s PineHills Course.
A philanthropic group
The Myrtlewood Senior Men’s Golf Association was founded in 1970, and the 73-member group is highly organized with a board of directors and bylaws.
It has weekly, monthly, annual and special events.
For many years the group collected weekly dues and tournament entries and gave the money back in prizes to winners.
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, the group decided to become philanthropic with the funds, and chose to give them to the club employees who had their hours cut by the pandemic’s impact.
Once Covid had largely passed and employees were back to full time, the group looked for other charitable opportunities and vetted four nonprofits, settling on the Make-A-Wish South Carolina foundation. The organization aims to grant the wishes of children diagnosed with critical illnesses to enhance their lives.
This is the fifth year of the Myrtlewood tournament, and will be the fourth year it donates to Make-A-Wish.
The tournament will continue to be open to anyone, and tournament director Chris Lovorn, who is the Myrtlewood men’s group’s secretary and treasurer and a newly-appointed Make-A-Wish South Carolina board member, said the association wants to grow and expand the tournament. This year’s event has prizes for men’s, women’s and mixed teams.
“Our executive committee got together and decided if we could do it internally, we could certainly do it for the community,” Lovorn said, “. . . and what a great organization to be involved with. The thing that impresses me is the quality and the dedication of the volunteers. They work with these children and they work with these families from Day 1, and in a lot of cases they’re there for the child even post high school graduation. The relationship and the bond is just amazing. And once a wish kid, always a wish kid and family.”
Three of Make-A-Wish’s national sponsors have a local presence, and Dave & Busters, Red Robin and Topgolf all contribute “significantly” to the event.
A Star Wars costume group took part dressed as Stormtroopers and Darth Vader, who Luca struggled to keep from staring at, and the Big Air mascot all took part in the wish reveal.
The Myrtlewood men’s association also presented Luca with gifts it purchased.
The tournament featured numerous raffle prizes including a seven-day Hilton Grand Vacations package, and hole in one prizes included a new Hadwin-White vehicle and Graham E-Z-Go golf cart.
“The community response has just been superb,” Lovorn said.
Founders Group International, which operates the 36-hole Myrtlewood facility and 19 other courses on the Grand Strand, held a round-up your bill fundraiser in September at all of its courses and presented Make-A-Wish South Carolina with a check for $10,000 Wednesday.
FGI has also hosted for three years a fundraising tournament for the Holmes family and its foundation at World Tour Golf Links for the past three years, and Make-A-Wish is one of the company’s primary charities.
FGI director of operations Matt Daly presented the check. His daughter, Caroline, now 18, was a Make-A-Wish kid after she was diagnosed with Leukemia at the age of 4.
“My daughter got a wish when she was 5,” Daly said. “My daughter is a cancer survivor and Make-A-Wish was a big part of our family’s journey of coping and getting healed and going through it, and they do everything. It’s a good charity that does things great.
“. . . It does a lot for the parents, too. I can tell you it meant a lot to me back then and it’s still something that resonates with me today. We hope to keep a good strong relationship with Make-A-Wish”
Last year’s event featured a family whose wish had been granted, and they told the story of the significance of that wish on them. This is the first time a wish was granted at the tournament itself.
Lovorn said Make-A-Wish S.C. granted 237 wishes during its most recent fiscal year, which runs from September through August, and the goal this year is 250. Lovorn said there are 26 wishes pending for families in Horry and Georgetown counties.
Eventually they want to be able to grant every wish that’s sought.
“We’re engaged. We’re going to get there,” Lovorn said. “If we can move this tournament forward, I’d love to see the day when this tournament can get to a substantial amount of money. . . . That’s the ultimate goal.”
Lovorn said the average cost that’s budgeted for granting a wish is about $7,500, and he believes Wednesday’s tournament will bring in enough to grant five wishes. “So we’re going to stack pennies,” he said.
Luca’s journey
As just a 2-year-old, Luca experienced frequent ear infections and low-grade fevers, and his health deteriorated further to include more intense fevers, leg bruises and increasing lethargy.
Luca was rushed to MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital in Charleston and was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at 2 1/2, which was “987 days ago if we need to be specific,” said Luca’s mother Kate. “Our total world turned upside down.”
Luca’s cancer has been in remission for the past four months, and he recently had his port for treatments removed from his chest, leaving a scar as a remnant.
But it’s been a three-year battle, and Luca still attends three therapies weekly.
Luca received regular treatment at Shawn Jenkins, “and that really became our home away from home,” Kate said. “He spent more than 75 days in-patient, 45 trips back and forth to clinic within his first 11 months of treatment. All while we were pregnant with our third child. So it’s been a little crazy, but we are considered one of the lucky ones.”
Friends and family were at Disney World about six months into Luca’s treatment and FaceTimed him with the characters Buzz and Woody from Toy Story, who spoke to Luca. Buzz and Woody dolls have been Luca’s support ever since, and he had them with him Wednesday.
“That was the light where he was like, ‘I want to go to Buzz and Woody’s house,’ and I was like, ‘OK, we’ll figure that out,’ “ Kate said. “So that was kind of the beginning of his wish and us just kind of turning the page on what has been one of the most traumatic and darkest parts of our lives as parents.
“Like you’re completely helpless when your kid’s in the hospital and he’s wanting to get up and is attached to all of these tubes and whatnot.”
The Disney World trip for the family of five, which includes father Michael and Luca’s older and younger sisters, should be an escape from the family’s daily travails — one they wouldn’t be able to afford having gone from two incomes to one with the constant care Luca has required.
“We are pretty blessed to have Make-A-Wish come in because we wouldn’t be able to provide this for our entire family,” Kate said. “But more as even from a respite side. Just something to give us to look forward to, for us to kind of sit back and not have to plan absolutely everything. Make-A-Wish does it all for you. And we really, really, really are just looking forward to being able to take a breath, step away and just enjoy our kids. Like be normal, whatever that is, but be a normal family.”
While in the midst of their own battle, the Holmes’ created the Strongman Luca James Foundation, which incorporates his middle name, to support families dealing with childhood cancer. Its immediate mission is to “wrap families with love and financial support,” and a lasting goal is to offer comprehensive emotional, financial, and logistical support to families. Its website www.strongmanlucajames.com provides more details.
“The foundation is slow-rolling, but we have had amazing support from our friends and family,” Kate said, “and I felt the drive to just give back. This community has rallied around us. . . . Instead of us keeping the monies raised in the golf tournament that we had this summer, I said I want to start a foundation to be able to help other families. Specifically our mission right now is to help people in our community, because there is no hospital in Horry or Georgetown County that can adequately help our kids.”
Kate said that the foundation plans to eventually partner with the Shawn Jenkins oncology department to provide emotional support to families.
”There was no one there to support us from a mental health aspect,” Kate said. “It was taxing. . . . What if a mom needs just talk therapy, but their insurance doesn’t cover it? That’s where we want to partner with Shawn Jenkins and be able to step in. That’s our ultimate long-term goal for our foundation.”
