Cheryl Colleluori with her son Michael outside the new Nick’s House in Swarthmore.
Courtesy of John George, Philadelphia Business Journal
Inside a house on the 200 block of Chester Road in Swarthmore, cans of paint and buckets of spackle are everywhere as workers are busy transforming the seven-bedroom dwelling for a new use.
“This house was on the market for three years,” said Cheryl Colleluori. “Nobody wants these monsters anymore, but as soon as we saw it we knew this was the place we’d been looking for.”
Cheryl Colleluori is president of the Headstrong Foundation, a nonprofit organization started by her son Nick to help cancer patients and their families. Nick Colleluori was a college lacrosse player at Hofstra University who grew up in Holmes, Pa. He started the foundation from his hospital bed while he was undergoing treatment for cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which would claim his life in 2006 when he was 21 years old.
The foundation now led by his family is in the middle of a $1.5 million fund-raising campaign to support the creation of its second Nick House, which will provide support, relief and comfort to patients battling cancer and family members who travel to Philadelphia for treatment.
Part of those funds will cover the cost of buying the Swarthmore property and turning it into a Nick’s House. About $500,000 in funding will be needed to sustain and maintain the 7,000-square-foot house in the future.