Rutgers co-workers host benefit to help defray costs from Taylor Barta's illness
'Kids carry no fear of cancer, and I refuse to give Taylor that fear.'- Les Barta
The device implanted in the chest of 6-year-old Taylor Barta through which he receives medicine looks a lot like the arc reactor his hero, Iron Man, wears to keep the shrapnel in his body from reaching his heart.
It is a comparison his father came up with the night before Taylor started chemotherapy.
“Taylor loves the movie Iron Man, he wore the costume for Halloween – and I think the identification with his superhero gives him comfort,” says Les Barta, a lieutenant with Rutgers Department of Emergency Services.
The family’s nightmare began two days after Christmas with a swelling Laura Barta noticed on her son’s thigh after a bath.
Next came the whirlwind of doctors, diagnostic scans and biopsies, and then the four words that would change the Bartas’ lives: stage 4 alveolar rhabodymyosarcoma (ARMS), a rare and aggressive form of soft-tissue cancer.
Since January, Taylor has been undergoing chemotherapy at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. He recently began an additional protocol, an intensive radiation treatment, which involves overnight trips to a hospital in Philadelphia.
Throughout his ordeal – he has been hospitalized with fevers to guard against infection on 45 separate days – Taylor remains upbeat. A teacher from the school in Monroe, where until January he attended kindergarten, visits the house twice a week and he enjoys learning in the classroom alongside other youngsters at the Cancer Institute’s children's school program.
“Kids carry no fear of cancer, and I refuse to give Taylor that fear,” says Les. “He feels sick sometimes, he’s lost his hair and lashes, but he’s still that energetic, happy boy who lights up a room when he smiles.”
The Bartas, both Rutgers alums, try hard to keep some sense of normalcy for Taylor, as well as his younger brother, Ryan, 3, and Sarah, nine months. Laura, a consultant with an environmental firm, stopped working in January to care for the family full time. Les switched his 4 p.m.-midnight shift to a 4 a.m.-2 p.m. schedule.
The family feels lucky to have both sets of grandparents living nearby and support from our friends and colleagues.
In March, Les Barta’s co-workers set up the “Help Taylor Heal Fund” to help defray costs associated with Taylor’s illness: insurance co-pays, travel expenses, reduced family income. They have raised about $7,000 so far and hope to reach their goal of $20,000.
On July 9, the Friends of Taylor “Ironman” Barta will host a comedy benefit show at the Busch Campus Center. The fundraiser features comedians Vic Dibitetto, Tommy Gooch and Freddy Rubino and begins at 8 p.m.
Steve Webb, a fire inspector with Rutgers’ emergency services, says witnessing the Bartas’ plight has humbled them.
“We see Les working four 10-hour shifts and going right to the hospital. He’ll sleep there, and then come back to work,” says Webb, who helped finance the comedy benefit. “We wanted to do something for the family and hoped that helping them deal with the expenses that are building up would give them one less worry.”
The Bartas are grateful to their Rutgers friends. The couple graduated from Cook College (now the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences) in 2000, he in biology and she in environmental sciences.
Sometimes after a treatment, Taylor and his father will walk to Geology Hall on the College Avenue Campus. “The museum is one of his favorite places,” Les says. “I proposed to Laura at Passion Puddle. We married in Kirkpatrick Chapel. Taylor knows Rutgers and knows it means a lot to us.”
For more information, please contact Carla Cantor of Rutgers Media Relations at 848-932-0555 or ccantor@ucm.rutgers.edu.