'Casting for Courage' raises money to help children dealing with cancer

Story and photo by Senior Contributing Editor Alice Gerard

Fishing brought joy to two young brothers almost two years after one of the boys was diagnosed with leukemia.

“Rohan got diagnosed two weeks shy of our move to Buffalo,” said the boys’ mom, Sandhya, who explained the family came to Western New York from Toronto in 2016. They now live in Williamsville.

“We were introduced to Carly’s Club through Roswell Park,” Sandhya said. “They said, ‘We’d like to introduce you to Capt. Ned (Librock) from Catching Dreams Fishing Charters.’ We do not fish. We know nothing about fishing. All four of us just know Bass Pro Shop. We go in there for kicks. Stan went out first with the boys (Rohan and Milan), and they fell in love with it. Meaning the boys did. They were 7 and 6 years old.

“My husband I each went out with them, and we decided it’s not for us. We get to drop them off. They’re taken care of. Now they are 16 and 17, but when they were young, we got some alone time.”

On the morning of Aug. 22, Rohan and Milan were on a fishing boat, participating in a tournament that was part of the Catching Dreams fundraiser. This year, the fundraiser was held at the Buffalo Launch Club and was sponsored by both the BLC and Anchor Marine. The event included the fishing tournament, followed by a picnic, live music and activities, including cornhole and a bounce house. Fundraising activities included an auction and a raffle. The event also includes “an awards ceremony for the children. We give a trophy for the biggest fish, the most fish, the smallest fish,” said Librock, owner of Catching Dreams Fishing Charters.

“We’re raising funds by having people sponsor boats,” he said. “We’ve got 13 families in 12 boats going out. The funds are split between Catching Dreams Charters, Kaely’s Kindness Foundation, and the Pediatric Cancer Collaborative (formerly known as the PUNT Foundation).”

Kaely’s Kindness Foundation was founded in honor of Kaely Kwitek, who was diagnosed with a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma when she was 16 years old. The foundation provides help and support to teenaged girls living with cancer. The PUNT Foundation was started by former Buffalo Bills Pro Bowl punter Brian Moorman and his wife, Amber, to provide support for families of children living with cancer.

Joe Cinelli, past commodore of the BLC, said he was excited to have the club host the event.

“They had it next door (at Anchor Marine) the last few years, and I always wanted … and Ned and I were friends … I always said we could do it. We do parties very well here at the Buffalo Launch Club,” he said. “We’ve got the whole pavilion and all the food and the service. We have the grills. The kids and the families could just walk right off the boat, come over here, and sit down and relax and enjoy the rest of their day.

“So, this event is important to my family. My brother is a full-time fishing guide and so is my nephew. We had our nephew, Jon Jon, who passed away from a brain stem glioma in 2008. He was 7 years old. It touches us probably more than it does a lot of people, so it’s important. It’s a privilege and an honor for us to do this with Ned and the various organizations to raise money for the kids.”

Allie Mikulec of co-sponsoring Anchor Marine said she was happy to see “13 families with kids who are either in treatment or post-treatment (participate in the fishing tournament). That’s my favorite part of the day, to see them all go out and fish and how excited they are to have a day and not be bogged down by everything they’re dealing with. Get off on the water and come back here, have fun, do bounce houses or whatever. It’s nice to give them a day of just fun.”

“There are a lot of kids who are first-time fishermen,” Cinelli said. “Ned actually has rods and reels that he’ll give to the kids at the end of the day that he gets donated. So, there’s a lot of donations. Like Ned said, he’s amazed and surprised where all the money comes from. The various people who just give.

“We serve a small community. The boating community in Western New York is very tight and very small. Everybody knows everybody. It’s great to be able to use a facility like this. There’s no better view in Western New York, as far as I’m concerned. When you sit in that room or you walk out there, and you’ve got all of the boats and the beautiful marina and the grounds here. We need to use this to bring our community together.”

Mikulec said, “We have a couple sponsors and, every year, they sponsor a boat and then, they can actually come and fish. Great Lakes Building Systems is one of them. Every single year, they’ve been a boat sponsor, and they come and get involved. They are part of the community, and they know the families. They fish with the same family every year. It’s special to them, too, which is nice. Shore Docker did a boat, as well. They got people out fishing with the kids.”

Sandhya and Rohan show off Rohan’s “Casting for Courage” hat.

••••••••

For Rohan and his brother, Milan, the love of fishing that Librock offered him began with a few opportunities to catch fish. It was encouraged by a special gift from Librock.

Sandhya had called Librock during the first Christmas they were in Buffalo: “ ‘We cannot break the bank, but the boys have asked for fishing rods and bait for Christmas. Can you please help me? I need something $50 each.’ He said, ‘Leave it with me.’

“I was waiting for a text with a link (to an online shopping site). He called me and asked if I was home. I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘OK, I’ll be right there.’ My husband worked from home then. He showed up at our front door with two rods and boxes. He says, ‘Here you go. You put this under the tree, and you write whose ever name you want, from Santa, from the parents. …’ He made sure that he came when they were at school so they wouldn’t know. That is Capt. Ned in Catching Dreams. That’s how much his organization means to us.”

For the two boys, the love of fishing has endured. Rohan, who has been cancer free for eight years, said fishing brings him a sense of peace. He talked about, “The feeling of when the fish hooks itself on that rod and the feeling of you reeling it up to wonder what kind of fish you got. I was so excited. I would forget all my troubles. I would only focus on happiness and the fish. It’s like therapy.”

For Librock, running the nonprofit Catching Dreams Foundation is all about giving back.

“I came from a family that always gave something back to the community,” he said. “I always liked fishing, and I had my captain’s license, but I didn’t want to fish commercially and have another job. I started working with veterans that had PTSD, and then a friend hooked me up with Roswell Park eight years ago.

“I started this business eight years ago, the Catching Dreams charters. We had three kids, and last year, we had 159 inquiries.

“It’s my not-for-profit. We provide fishing therapy for pediatric oncology patients and chronically challenged children at no charge. It’s partially awareness. It’s partially getting 13 families out on the water to participate in fishing therapy, and then, of course, raise some funds for future trips for the kids.

“We got so busy with the children that the veterans said, ‘Take care of the kids.’ I have a strong business background and I said, ‘This is too good to keep local,’ so we migrated the business to Rochester and Syracuse, where we had a very strong presence. We’re developing in the Albany area right now.”

Sandhya said fishing has helped Rohan deal with the side effects of cancer and cancer treatment: “The boys love fishing. (Rohan) couldn’t do sports. He lost his balance. We had to put training wheels back on his two-wheel bike. He was playing soccer. He was skating. He was supposed to be a hockey player. He had to stop everything. To be able to go out and about and to feel like you’re being active for an active child, it means the world.”

“This organization is truly one in a million, to the point where it feels like this kind of stuff isn’t real,” Rohan said. “It feels too good to be true.”

Sandhya said, “They’ve become family,” noting Catching Dreams provides “therapy. Fishing therapy. You know, he brings them together.”

For Cinelli and Mikulec, the event is about community outreach for both the BLC and Anchor Marine.

“We raise enough money at these events between this one and the one we do in Lewiston to have several families fish throughout the year,” Cinelli said. “It covers a lot of the costs for the kids to go out. They went from a couple of boats to doing 30-40 trips a summer, taking different families out.

“It brings our community together. It brings our boating community together from the Launch Club and from Anchor. Our members and guests and families come here, too.”

For more information about Catching Dreams Fishing Charters, check out its website at https://www.catchingdreamscharters.org/.

“If anyone wants to make a donation, my motto is there’s no donation too big or too small. You can do it right online, on my website,” Librock said.