For days, Dr. Thomas Haveron had been receiving a surplus of “Likes” to his foundation’s Facebook page. All of them were sent through the grapevine by a person named Ethan. “Ethan sent me!” is what Dr. Haveron remembers seeing continuously on his page. Finally, he decided to contact this mysterious Ethan character to thank him for all of the recognition he had been sending to his foundation. To Dr. Haveron’s dismay, Ethan had passed away the day before.
The foundation that Ethan so eagerly wanted his friends and relatives to become aware of is the Medicine Via Philanthropy Foundation, or simply the MVP Foundation. Founded by Dr. Thomas Haveron in 2011, the MVP Foundation has opened the doors for many terminally-ill children to receive treatment and care through grants and scholarships. The foundation has also made it possible for young adults to pursue medical careers through these funds.
The foundation’s niche has been to combine the doctor’s connections in the sports world to raise smiles and awareness, and it allows the children they are helping to have at last one day in which they forget all of the medical treatment they are going through while enjoying a Yankees game or even meeting some of the most popular figures in sports.
Although he is the official chiropractor of the Trenton Thunder, the Newark Bears, and of the New Jersey Nets (now the Brooklyn Nets) by day, his “baby” is his foundation. “My foundation is kind of like Make-A-Wish that helps kids’ wishes come true who are very very sick, whether it be to meet their favorite athlete, be a ball boy at a Miami Heat game, go to NASCAR races, and all kinds of other sporting events,” says Dr. Haveron. Elizabeth, the mom of a young girl that Dr. Haveron is helping through the MVP Foundation says the doctor is, “always putting a smile on her [my daughter’s] face. When he’s around, she kind of forgets of what’s going on in her life.”
The old saying, “it takes a village to raise a child,” particularly resigns with Dr. Haveron when he thinks back to his upbringing, and it’s a belief that has stuck with him and has been the base of why MVP came to be. He realized that people step up to the plate as a whole to tend to a young child when the child is at a vulnerable state. Dr. Haveron had the chance to not have to go through life alone, and he wants to have an opportunity to recreate that in his line of work.
At the age of 4, Dr. Haveron had a more close-knit relationship to his extended family than most would. Both of his parents passed away when he was just a young child; his mom from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer that is now 99.9 percent curable. He was raised by his aunts and uncles all of his life, not to mention a lot of help from his grandfather and the Catholic Church.
“Because of people like her [my mom] and a lot of the kids that I come into contact with who go through trial studies, they find cures to these cancers,” says Dr. Haveron.
He persevered through being a ward of the state of New Jersey, or in other words a foster child, and being on welfare until the age of 23, eventually deciding to pursue a career in medicine because of his need to want to help people.
“I raised a lot of money for many people over the years-millions of dollars over the course of 25 to 30 years-and people always asked me why I don’t start my own foundation,” which is what Dr. Haveron finally did just last year.
Since the inception of the MVP Foundation, Dr. Haveron has teamed up with many prominent foundations like Derek Jeter’s Turn 2 Foundation, the David Ortiz Children’s Fund, the Wounded Warrior Project, the American Cancer Society, and most recently, Robinson Cano’s RC24 Foundation, to raise money to help children in need.
“I’ve worked with Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada. I work with a lot of Yankees. I like baseball, I like helping people out, I like children, so anything that gets me involved with those things, pretty much I always try to get involved with.”
Dr. Haveron realizes that in order for the general community to find out about his foundation and to be able to raise the funds necessary for medical research, he is compelled to team up with big-name athletes who happen to be close friends of his.
“I’m not Robinson Cano, so I know that in order for me to raise money, I have to go out there and I have to let people know what I’m doing through these athletes because I’m not a superstar like he is. It’s easy for him because I mean c’mon, he’s Robinson Cano!”
“I’ve worked with him, I’ve seen what he’s done, I helped him get ambulances [to donate in Robinson’s native of Dominican Republic], and I know what kind of person he is and he’s the most genuine, caring, giving person you’ll ever meet,” Dr. Haveron said of the New York Yankees second baseman.
Cano had similar praise for Dr. Haveron in a recent interview in New Jersey. “It means a lot to me,” Cano said, “A special friend to have like that spending his time, it’s just good the way he helps.”
The MVP Foundation comes across stories of children who need medical help through many different means. Once such story of a young brave girl named Leslie, who was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, came to Dr. Haveron’s from a friend of a friend.
At just 10 years old, Leslie and her family learned that she had neuroblastoma stage four, a malignant tumor that develops from nerve tissue which has now distributed to distant lymph nodes, liver, bone marrow, and other organs. This form of cancer turned a healthy little girl into a young child who “didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to do anything,” says her mom, Elizabeth.
“She changed a lot physically, she lost her hair, she didn’t feel comfortable with the way she looked.”
Through surgery and chemotherapy, Leslie has been improving from the state where she was when she was first diagnosed.
Leslie has gone to Yankees game with the doctor, has attended sporting events and met people that break her from the reality of cancer, even if just for that one instant.
To prize her on her tremendous improvement, the MVP Foundation granted Leslie and her family a three-day vacation package to Disney. Elizabeth can recall Leslie’s reaction to the big news just as vividly as when it happened.
“She said, ‘Mom! You’re not going to believe what he told me! Is he playing with me? Is he joking? Oh my God!’ Her eyes were about to pop out! She’s very excited and very happy. She’s very thankful for Dr. Haveron.”
Although any form of severe sickness like that of Leslie’s might cause an emotional and physical blunder in a child’s life, this half-Mexican, half-Dominican, high-spirited young girl has never lost hope. She has become the glue of her family, keeping everyone strong and hopeful. A lot of people complain about everyday misfortunes, but Leslie has stayed strong through her journey.
“She doesn’t let anyone give up,” says Elizabeth.
“She’s an inspiration. I see someone different now than the person I saw last year. I’m so happy for her,” says Dr. Haveron of Leslie, now 12.
The MVP Foundation is currently sponsoring a young woman to go to medical school and she is presently in Thailand donating her free time to children to teach them personal hygiene. When she is done with school she will head to the Dominican Republic to donate a year of her time to a hospital picked by Robinson Cano, a feat that would not have been possible without the foundation’s help. She’s not the only one either. The MVP Foundation recently gave a scholarship to a young girl named Mabel Mayorga who dreamt of going to medical school but her career dreams were put to a halt when her father got into a car accident and was paralyzed. In 2010 the Association of American Medical Colleges estimated that by graduation, a medical students’ tuition will have cost him or her a minimum of $150,000. Mabel now has the funds to start school.
Dr. Haveron has this outlet in his foundation because the belief of the power of our youth growing to be young successful people who help younger children, is what he’s done in his life and career. He realizes that many children who aspire to be doctors might not have the means necessary available to them to attend medical school, so MVP has made it one of their missions to open these doors.
The MVP Foundation gets it funds from means like everyday donations, from money that is raised in any major event, and so on. It helps when he teams up with big-name foundations because the general public becomes aware of the little engine, the MVP Foundation, that is putting the whole show together. Dr. Haveron says, “At this point the most important thing right now is funds. Every penny that comes in goes out. Funds are our biggest asset at the moment.”
As far as Ethan goes, the young man who passed away a day before Dr. Haveron and the MVP Foundation contacted him to thank him for the notoriety, he dreamed of meeting a baseball player, a dream that the foundation helped come true before his passing. At the time, Dr. Haveron didn’t recall making such a big difference in Ethan’s life by just giving him the gift of meeting a famous athlete, but Ethan’s mom contacted the doctor to explain why Ethan did what he did through Facebook for the MVP Foundation.
The MVP Foundation has put smiles on many children’s faces since its inauguration, by teaming up with different areas in sports. A simple seat at a Yankees or Heat game, a meet-and-greet with a star athlete, or a check for medical school and the promise to work at a hospital picked out by a Major Leaguer, is what Dr. Haveron and his MVP Foundation have provided for ailing children and young adults. From overcoming being on welfare to teaming up with some of the most elite players in sports to change the lives of children, Dr. Thomas Haveron and his MVP Foundation have plenty to be proud of.
“It makes me happy to make other people happy. …If it wasn’t for the people who did the same for me, I wouldn’t be here today. This is the way I was raised. I try to help out as much people as I can. I just think it’s the right thing to do, you know?”
The MVP Foundation has become the “village” to children now, which Dr. Thomas Haveron’s family once became years ago.
