April 22, 2008
From Georgetown Athletic Communications
Washington, D.C. - As the National Students of Ailing Mothers and Fathers Grief Awareness Week came to an end this weekend, former Georgetown University football player David Fajgenbaum, the founder of the group, continued to spread his message.
Fajgenbaum and the National Students of Ailing Mothers and Fathers were featured on The Today Show on Saturday morning, April 19.
Fajgenbaum, who is studying toward earning a master's degree in public health with a focus in cancer prevention at Oxford University in England, flew back to the United States two weeks ago to be interviewed for the piece. The Today Show sent a camera crew to his home in Raleigh, N.C. and interviewed David, as well as his two sisters, Lisa and Gena. The crew also spent time with a chapter of Students of AMF at the University of North Carolina, the second school in the country to start a chapter after David started the chapter at Georgetown. The crew also visited with students at North Carolina State University and Meredith College, two of the more recent schools to add chapters.
The Today Show found out about the Students of AMF after reading about Fajgenbaum and the organization in the April/May edition of The Reader's Digest. The magazine had selected Fajgenbaum's group for its monthly feature "Make it Matter," which profiles a different person or charity.
"It's unbelievable," Fajgenbaum said over the phone from England on Friday afternoon. "The organization has just grown and grown. We're hoping that with this appearance, students at other schools who are seeking an outlet can find out about us and know that there are resources for them."
Fajgenbaum is finishing up his one-year master's at Oxford. He is currently working on a 30,000-word thesis focusing on how to lower the levels of cancer in the general population and will enroll in med school at the University of Pennsylvania next year.
He has been spending seven hours a day in England working on his thesis and then seven working on Students of AMF. His hope is that he will continue in this role for another two years.
"England has been a great place to study and the people are incredible," he said. "It's been challenging to run the group from here, but I hope to do it for another two years when I get back. We're growing at a pretty fast rate and I want it to be so big and to help so many people that we need a full-time staff to run it."
