Youssef Wadih
WEST ORANGE, NJ — Movember may be a bona fide tradition in West Orange by this point, but its organizer decided to go in a different direction for its annual kickoff party.
To launch the fourth campaign for Team Mo’Wo — the township’s official unit as part of the international movement encouraging males to grow mustaches for men’s health awareness throughout November — its captain, Perry Bashkoff, hosted a tricky tray raffle at the Essex House on Nov. 4, featuring more than two dozen prizes. The fundraiser included locally-based incentives such as gift cards to the Residence Inn and Don Juan Restaurant in addition to major prizes, including tickets to Broadway’s “School of Rock” and a New Jersey Devils game. And it turned out to be an undisputed success, raising approximately $2,000 for the Movember Foundation.
That amount puts Team Mo’Wo well on its way of accomplishing Bashkoff’s goal of collecting $10,000 this year, as the teams has already raked in more than $8,000 so far. The team has raised roughly $30,000 during the past three years. Of course, the team captain’s biggest objective is encouraging men to get checked by their doctors, something he said they are often reluctant to do.
“We don’t necessarily take care of ourselves the way that we should,” Bashkoff told the West Orange Chronicle in a Nov. 3 phone interview. “If for 30 days men around the world are able to pay attention to it, feel comfortable talking about it and, most importantly, take care of themselves, then hopefully we can save however many lives we can.”
As a lupus sufferer, Bashkoff was always committed to promoting men’s health. But, he said losing his close friend Michael Terry to cancer at the end of last year’s Movember inspired him to change his lifestyle. Bashkoff said Terry was passionate about celebrating life right up until his death, and now he wants to live the same way. As a result, he said he has changed his outlook on eating, sleeping, exercising and dealing with stress.
And Bashkoff hopes that many other West Orange men will do the same, for their families if not for themselves.
“I have learned that if you’re not OK, no one else around you can be OK,” Bashkoff said. “If you can take care of yourself, it allows you to take care of others.”
Bashkoff wants to continue spreading that message throughout Movember, pointing out that he is looking into the possibility of holding public discussions led by doctors. He said he has also been in communication with the West Orange School District about starting an exercise initiative so that even those too young for facial hair can participate in the movement. Then there is the simple act of growing a mustache, which is intended to draw people’s attention so that the wearer can start a conversation about staying healthy.
Chris Moses knows full well the power of the mustache to that end. The normally clean-shaven Moses, who actually conceived the idea of bringing Movember to West Orange with Bashkoff and a few other parents on the sidelines of their sons’ Mountain Top League soccer matches, said he likes to grow the most unusual mustache styles in order to attract as much attention for the cause as possible. He said he had a lot of meaningful conversations with people last year while sporting biker-style mutton chops. This year he is trying the pencil-thin look, listing actors John Waters and Vincent Price among his inspirations.
The effort is a lot of fun for Moses, but the township dad also is well aware of the seriousness of the cause. He said there is a lot that men can do in order to prevent or catch potential health crises, from getting regular checkups to exercising to eating right. Yet, because men are “stupid,” he joked, many avoid pursuing these fixes and pay for it down the road, which is something he is trying to avoid.
“We only have one body and if we don’t take care of ourselves, that’s all we got,” Moses told the Chronicle during the event. “Movember reminds me that (staying healthy) is important for my health and my longevity with my family.”
The importance of the initiative’s mission becomes clear when looking at men’s health statistics. According to the Movember Foundation, one in seven men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and one American dies from the disease every 19 minutes. Approximately 8,720 new cases of testicular cancer are diagnosed every year, per the foundation, and 380 men are expected to die of it this year. And those are just the ailments affecting men exclusively.
Youssef Wadih, another parent who brought Movember to town, credits the campaign with saving his own life. Wadih explained that he started undergoing tests he had never taken before shortly after getting involved with the initiative and, as a result, his doctor discovered a cancer-causing bacteria in his stomach. Fortunately for him, he said, he was able to take medication that eliminated it. But if it were not for his proactive attitude, his doctor said things could have been much worse.
“He told me that if I did not do that test and they did not check the sample, in the longterm (I would have had) cancer,” Wadih told the Chronicle at the kickoff. “It’s something I never would have thought to do if I did not think of my health.”
Promoting men’s health is not the only reason Wadih supports Movember. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he said it was not easy being a Muslim in the United States, but the West Orange community embraced him as one of its own. He said he has tried to give back to the township ever since, with the campaign being a prime example. The initiative brings residents closer together, he said, both through raising funds and simply spending time in on another’s company.
Steve Quirk can certainly speak to that fact. Though he has lived in West Orange for decades and knows much of the community through his work with the MTL, Quirk said there are a lot of people he still has not met. Participating in Movember gives people the chance to get to know their neighbors, he said.
Mayor Robert Parisi agreed that Movember is a great way for the community to come together. And Parisi is glad to see so many residents join in for such an important cause. The mayor said the initiative’s success speaks to the caring nature of the township.
“We have a population that is conscientious and certainly socially conscious about a number of causes,” Parisi told the Chronicle in a Nov. 3 phone interview. “When you look at the support Movember’s gotten, it tells you that a lot of people understand the need to talk about men’s health issues — a subject that is not always discussed very often the rest of the year.”
Team Mo’Wo’s influence even extends beyond West Orange. Hudson County resident Rani Soto lent his support to West Orange’s campaign last year and was so impressed by Bashkoff’s work that he decided to hold a major Movember event of his own at TapHaus in Jersey City on Dec. 3. Also like Bashkoff, Soto said he is especially committed to making Movember a success — but for a different reason.
Soto is a six-year survivor of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, yet life did not return to normal for him when he was declared cancer-free. He told the Chronicle that he lived in fear for most of those six years, constantly worried that the disease would return and take him from his family. In fact, he said it was not until last summer that he realized he could help others, as well as himself, by sharing his story through Facebook and connecting with others who have gone through the experience. That epiphany was what he calls his real second chance, and now he wants to use Movember as a way to help fellow survivors find theirs.
“Your body will recover in time, but that’s all negligible if your mind is not right,” Soto said in a Nov. 4 phone interview. “That’s what I want people to realize. There’s a community of people who want to get you right not only physically and financially, but emotionally — to get you back on track to becoming the best version of yourself and getting back to living your life. If you survive cancer, it’s an opportunity to grab your life back. And it first has to happen mentally.”
But one does not have to be a cancer survivor or even know someone who has been afflicted to participate in Movember. Bashkoff stressed that all people have men in their lives, which means everyone has someone at risk of dying from preventable ailments. Growing a mustache might not be enjoyable for everyone — he said his own makes him look like Mario from the Super Mario Bros. — but it is worthwhile if it means saving lives.
“It’s all in good fun, and it’s for a good cause,” Bashkoff said, adding that growing a mustache is “not something that I’d do every day, but you can definitely do things for 30 days. For 30 days you can pretty much do anything in life.”
To donate to Team Mo’Wo, visit us.movember.com/team/2233118.
Photos by Sean Quinn
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