People cope with the death of a loved one in all manner of ways. Some withdraw, work it out and return. Some, suddenly directionless, allow their worlds to fall apart. Some turn to religion; some turn away from it.
And some find in their own pain the motivation to try to see to it that others never have to find out what it feels like.
While grieving the loss of his wife to breast cancer in 2002, 36-year-old photographer and punk fan Mark Beemer turned to his life's passion to help him do just that.
Music has always loomed influential in Beemer's life. Growing up amid Washington, D.C.'s legendary do-it-yourself punk underground in the late '80s, Beemer found both an entrée into that scene and an artistic outlet of his own, in photography. He bought a camera, taught himself to use it, and shot his first local band live in '89.
"I was always sort of searching for something that wasn't going to be a desk job," he remembers. "It made me sane in a world that was kind of … you know, when you're in college and you don't know what you're doing, you're kind of frightened all the time. When I found photography, it calmed me down, gave me focus and direction.
"My love of music, and the fact that I'd been going to shows for eons — I felt it was a great way to combine the two."
Eventually, Beemer ended up at a college in Madison, Wis. He availed himself of every opportunity to get back to the somewhat more musically happening D.C., and attend and shoot as many shows as possible. He also started working for a local Madison paper, and met Syrentha Savio, the young woman who would eventually become his wife.
But after only a year and a half of marriage, Savio passed away, a victim of breast cancer, in January of '02.
Rather than succumb to grief, Beemer threw himself into activism in her name. He started the Syrentha Savio Endowment, a charitable organization that raises money to help underprivileged breast cancer patients with the costs of treatment and medication.
"I founded the endowment as some sort of weird therapy," Beemer says. "It was out of not wanting to let go, and to try to do some good somewhere."
He operated the nonprofit in the usual way, holding fundraising dinners and the like, until April of '03, when a three-show hometown reunion by the late, cult-beloved Philadelphia hardcore act Kid Dynamite gave him a better idea. The gigs, all benefits for SSE, raised over $20,000. They also raised awareness of the endowment, and its aims, within the grassroots American all-ages/punk network of which Beemer was already a longtime member.
Beemer saw in the shows an opportunity to spread the word his way, to his people.
"That showed me the music I loved and survived on could give back to the community," he says. He also saw an unbelievable number of commemorative T-shirts sold in those three days.
Shortly after, Shirts for a Cure was born.
The idea was incredibly simple: Beemer would ask punk bands to donate a T-shirt design with their name on it, to be sold exclusively by Shirts for a Cure. The shirts would have a hip, limited-edition cachet; the organization would manufacture and sell the wares, with the money benefiting the Syrentha Savio Endowment. The sales also served to raise awareness of the organization's goals because the fans had to go through the charity to get them.
Beemer started out the way most of the great things about the punk scene always have — he just asked some friends for help.
"When I first started, everything was based on friendship," he says. "I grew up in D.C., so a lot of my friends were in bands, and I'd roadied for them and stuff. Approaching [familiar bands] like Strike Anywhere, Hot Water Music, Bouncing Souls, all those people from the old school, came right away because of my personal friendships with them and their crew."
Soon, newer acts noticed the older groups they respected supporting this charitable idea, and became intrigued.
"You start off and the organization is young, and it's hard to get people like [hip emo group] Taking Back Sunday to answer your phone call," says Beemer. "But soon all these other bands came in right away without a second question, because of my early success."
It's been around two years since Shirts for a Cure got rolling. Beemer has run a table at the Warped Tour twice, and has forged relationships with other big, kid-friendly packages like the Taste of Chaos Tour. Some 80-plus acts have donated tees designed by members, friends and in some cases even fans (several bands have held shirt-design competitions); many groups have two or three designs available on the Shirts for a Cure site, with more appearing regularly. The incredibly hot emo combo My Chemical Romance, an outfit that got involved with S4aC before its remarkable MTV-sized breakthrough, flew down to Austin at its own expense to play a free surprise show sponsored by the charity at this year's South By Southwest Music Conference.
Another extremely popular band, New Jersey's Thursday, booked its current tour, then insisted it be named after Shirts for a Cure and that Beemer and a bunch of his T-shirts come along.
And, to date, the program that started with Beemer asking some of his friends if he could sell some of their bands' shirts for charity has raised almost $400,000. The money has helped fund clinics in L.A., D.C. and Philly, as well as a prescription program at Georgetown University.
"Kids like T-shirts," Beemer says simply. "I've always liked T-shirts; this just proved what I knew, that I wasn't an anomaly. There was a difference that could be made, something that could be done through the love of T-shirts. It sounds goofy, but it's worked so far."
To find out more about the Syrentha Savio Endowment, go to www.syrentha.org. To order a shirt, go to www.shirtsforacure.com.
This article appears in May 10-16, 2006.