Troy Businessman: Donating Cleaning Services to Gilda's Club Was Easy

TROY, MI — When she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1985, Detroit native and beloved “Saturday Night Live” icon Gilda Radner “snuck away to try to understand her disease,” saying later that “everyone needs a place” to do the same, Laura Varon Brown, executive director of Gilda’s Club Metro Detroit told Patch.

The Royal Oak facility, one of the first Gilda’s Club facilities to open in the country, provides that place in a sprawling Victorian house at 3517 Rochester Road in Royal Oak. Inside, men, women, children and family friends meet to learn how to live with their or their loved ones’ diseases, regardless of the outcome.

Support comes in various forms — networking groups, lectures, workshop, music, art and social events, as well as more structured programs designed to help people cope with a disease that claims about 564,800 lives a year.

“We serve men, women and children faced with any kind of cancer,” Varon Brown said. “If you had parent or child, you could come to caregiver’s support group. You could come to meditation. A healthy family means a healthy patient, and a stronger outcome.”

Varon Brown says more than 1,000 people people walk in the red door of Gilda’s Club every month, many with compromised immune systems from the rigors of chemotherapy and other treatments. Keeping the 10,000-or-so-square-foot club house clean isn’t just a matter of maintaining a fresh,welcoming atmosphere, but the health of those who take advantage of Gilda's Club services depend on it being kept germ-free.

That’s where Tim Bridges comes in. The owner of The Cleaning Authority – Troy franchise, Bridges bid the cleaning job, and to Varon Brown’s amazement, said, “We would like to do this for you free of charge.”

The cost of his service would be about $300 a week. Bridges has been sending a crew to Gilda’s Club twice a week for more than two years, and Varon Brown figures it has saved the non-profit about $40,000 that can be spent on services for families battling cancer.

The savings is one thing, but what impressed Varon Brown most is the kindness behind the gesture.

Bridges, 44, knows what cancer can do to families.

His mother-in-law, Paige Renfroe, succumbed to complications of breast cancer about three years ago. “It hit her three times,” Bridges said, recalling Renfroe’s bouts with the disease in the 1980s, when it went into remission until 2010. She beat it again, but in 2013, was diagnosed with an advanced stage that claimed her life.

He and his wife, Tiffany, didn’t take advantage of the service at Gilda’s Club, but Bridges said he appreciates the value of the non-profit’s services.

“You do kind feel alone a bit,” he said. “You hear about cancer all the time, but not there’s not enough support. Gilda’s helps out with people personally touched by cancer and families as well.”

Bridges and his company were honored with the 2015 Program Support award at that year’s Gilda’s Big Night Out Gala.

“It was overwhelming,” said Bridges, who has owned the Troy franchise since 2008. “The audience gave a standing ovation. We weren’t looking for a thank-you, or to get business out of it.”

Varon Brown said she’s happy to provide referrals for Bridge’s company when friends and associates ask for cleaning service recommendations.

“This is money he doesn’t have in the bank,” Varon Brown said of the donated cleaning services. “It’s no small gesture.”

Bridges humbly disagrees.

“They are doing good for the community,” he said. “They needed their place cleaned, and we can be of service there. It’s the right thing to do.”

History of Gilda’s Club

Comedian Gilda Radner — whose characters as part of the original “Saturday Night Live” cast included Roseanne Roseannadanna, Emily Litella and Lisa Loopner — died of ovarian cancer in 1989.

The first Gilda’s Club — founded by her husband Gene Wilder, who died in August of this year, along with psychotherapist Joanna Bull, actor and tenor Mandy Patinkin, film critic Joel Siegel and others — opened in New York City in 1995. Gilda’s Club Metro Detroit came soon after, in 1998, and was the second Gilda’s Club in the country.

After a cancer diagnosis, doctors plan a course of treatment — but cancer affects more than just the body. It can affect the well-being of the cancer patient as well as those around them.

The success of the non-profit gave birth in 2000 to Gilda’s Club Worldwide. In 2009, Gilda’s Club Worldwide and The Wellness Community joined forces to become the Cancer Support Community, but Gilda’s Club Metro Detroit retained its name.

“Our name and logo represent the best of what we do: Provide a place for support, laughter and a community to lean on for anyone touched by cancer. The Gilda’s Club name and brand personalizes that mission for us with warmth and humor,” Varon Brown said in a statement at the time. “The important tagline in our name and logo of Cancer Support Community, gives clarity to the mission at large. We make it a point to educate our members on Gilda’s spirit and how one woman created and changed a movement. That is her important legacy.”

Today, the Cancer Support Community network includes more than 50 local affiliates, 100 satellite locations and online services.

For more about Gilda’s Club Metro Detroit, go here.

Feature image: Tim Bridges gets a hug from Laura Varon Brown during a gala honoring his company for its contributions to Gilda’s Club Metro Detroit. (Photo courtesy of Gilda’s Club Metro Detroit)