Using jokes, comedy to help teen's cancer fight

Elementary school media aide Michelle King knew she had glommed onto something more powerful than Mickey Mouse, Pocahontas and The Little Mermaid. Her inspiration just wouldn't go away.

King, who works at Leggee Elementary School in Huntley, saw a TV news report last month about "Jokes4Miles," the effort to record 5,000 jokes to raise the spirits of a Chicago teenager fighting brain cancer. In the weeks that followed, the story of Miles and his jokes campaign followed her.

"It kept coming up," King says. "I'd hear it on the radio. It was always there."

So when the Leggee first-graders began their "Team Read" project this spring, King called an audible.

"We were writing letters to Disney characters and I thought, 'Oh, that would be cool if we could write jokes for Miles instead,'" King says. And instead of just writing them, maybe they could record themselves telling them. And instead of just first-graders, maybe she could get the whole school, from kindergartners though fifth-graders, to join the effort. She took her idea to Principal Scott Iddings.

"My first thought is, 'This is a great thing for her to take on,'" says Iddings, who was touched by the story at Jokes4Miles.com and King's commitment to help. "We're a community, and we know when someone's hurting, we support them."

King was off and running.

"We believe it would be a wonderful opportunity for Leggee, as well as our community, to come together and give something back to someone in need," King wrote in a permission slip that went home with the 1,080 students.

Friday, King finished the last of her recording sessions that featured 458 students, some staffers, three tapes and almost three hours of jokes.

"It's more than just the jokes," says grateful recipient Len Austrevich, the professional comedian who thought up the jokes project for his son, Miles. "It's people rallying behind him. I know how much that means to him."

Diagnosed with a rare brain cancer when he was 16, Miles Austrevich endured traumatic chemotherapy, radiation, stem-cell replacement therapy and dozens of drugs, doctors and procedures to beat his cancer, but the cancer always returned. A smart kid who had been accepted at several Ivy League institutions, Miles, now 19, was forced to postpone his academic career at Yale University last fall when the cancer returned for a fourth time, his father says.

When Miles was undergoing some of his first grueling treatments, his father asked a few of his comedian peers to record jokes to raise the boy's spirits. That idea spread to far-flung relatives who couldn't come visit. Then other comedians and friends sent jokes. "Miles' first reaction was, 'Hey, this is really great. Maybe we could do this for other kids,'" Len recalls.

Thinking about how 5K races raise awareness, funds and energy, Len, who has lot of professional connections through his comedy work, decided to launch the Jokes4Miles.com website with a goal of 5,000 jokes. Philanthropist Jamie Masada, founder of the Laugh Factory comedy clubs, will be hosting a Joke-a-Thon for Miles at clubs in California and at 3175 N. Broadway St. in Chicago as early as next weekend. With the help of other artists, businesses and charities, the polished website lets visitors submit jokes by email or upload them from their cameras, computers or phones.

"We're getting jokes from all over the world," says Len. Jokesters from South Africa, Australian and other far-flung places share the Jokes4Miles stage with more than five dozen professional comedians, second-graders from Des Plaines, an older man from Palatine and folks from Naperville and Arlington Heights.

"It's just all through the Internet," says Len, who hasn't advertised the site.

Each Huntley child recorded by King had to receive permission from a parent or guardian. They all also had to give additional permission for their recordings to be posted on the Internet. King had to convert a library storage closet into a recording studio, schedule joke times for the students, keep a separate tape for the kids who had permission to tell a joke but not appear on the website, catalog the jokes, help kids without jokes find funny ones in the library's joke books, and serve as director, editor and occasional censor.

While some bodily functions, gore and other grossness may be hilarious to fifth-grade boys, King made sure all the jokes fit family standards.

"Knowing the kids and the families in this community, it really wasn't a concern," Iddings adds.

It was a learning experience for everybody involved.

"They are having so much fun," King said as she prepared her closet/studio for the last of the third-grade performers. That fun coming through each performance is more important than the funny.

"I can't tell them we've already heard the 'boo, who?' joke five times," King says of the knock-knock joke favored by the younger comedians. "Besides, what do they say, it's all in the telling."

There's the one where one flea says to the other, "Should we walk or take the dog?" Or the question of why the food joined the track team. ('Cause it wanted to be fast food.)

One young girl named Abby practices her joke flawlessly a couple of times.

"Why did the monkey want to dance?" she says, pausing perfectly before adding, "Because he wanted to go bananas."

Then the camera is turned on and Abby says, "Why did the monkey go bananas?" Her eyes get big and she gasps as the gravity of her blunder sets in. King lets her tell the joke again, but she keeps the girl's mistake on the tape.

"C'mon, you guys watch bloopers on TV. That's the funniest part," King reassures the kids.

While they hope the jokes cheer Miles, the kids already have benefited.

"What really stuck with me are the kids who did them together to support each other. You see them coming out of their shells," King says, explaining how they would cheer on each other and offer unsolicited support. "It's cool."