I spent a Saturday at a local gym helping pack Joy Jars with friends, colleagues and strangers, and what started as a volunteer shift turned into a quiet lesson in resilience and community. The Jessie Rees Foundation’s Mobile Joy Jar effort brought people together to support kids facing pediatric cancer and reminded everyone that small acts can mean the world to a child in treatment. This piece follows that afternoon, the people who showed up, and the ripple of hope Jessie’s legacy continues to create.
The event took place at a gym in Tysons Corner where about one hundred volunteers gathered to assemble 3,000 Joy Jars. That number matches the jars Jessie Rees gave to children before she died at age 12 from terminal brain cancer, and the act of stuffing those containers felt like honoring her promise to other kids. Volunteers worked in shifts, packing hats, toys and little comforts for children who so often lose more than hair to treatment.
Jessie’s approach was simple and powerful, built around the phrase “Never Ever Give Up” (NEGU), and that spirit guided the room. Families, friends and coworkers traded stories while folding tiny hats and slipping in toys, and you could feel how those jars were meant to do more than distract a child—they were meant to steady them. The foundation runs Mobile Joy Jar events across the country and funnels boxes of joy into hospitals and homes around the world.
I was there with my sons, carrying on a tradition we embraced after my wife Kim died from cancer nearly five years ago, and Jessie’s story helped point the way. Grief finds odd paths toward purpose, and volunteering alongside other people who’d known loss made the work feel like balm. Corporate sponsors and longtime volunteers made it possible, but it was the small conversations and shared glances that made the day meaningful.
Colleagues and friends showed up from all parts of life, including a television friend who brought his family and stayed to help, plus a former CIA colleague whose presence felt like a quiet anchor. A high school athlete named Leo, who had endured 60 rounds of chemotherapy for a benign but invasive tumor, packed jars with steady hands and an easy smile. Even an Army officer finishing a workout spotted the group and volunteered for the entire shift, later slipping my son Nathan an Army challenge coin with a son’s kind of pride.
There were tender, private moments threaded through the hustle: a teacher juggling her own cancer treatment stuffed jars for an entire shift, and a mother who had once received a Joy Jar came back to give the same comfort to others. Meeting Erik Rees before the first Mobile Joy Jar event in 2022 was one of those moments that sits with you; “I miss my daughter every day,” Erik told me, “but she’d be super proud.” His words hung in the room as people worked, quiet and true.
That afternoon felt bigger than sorting items into boxes; it was about shared purpose and the strange, steady comfort of working toward something larger than yourself. We bonded across generations and backgrounds over tiny gifts meant to lift children during the hardest days of their lives. The joy traveled both ways—people who packed the jars left with a sense of having been touched by the same hope they were trying to give.
For me, there was a pause from the usual routines of work and national security notes, a chance to trade analysis for hands-on help. Jessie’s legacy brought out the best in people from all corners of life, reminding everyone that compassion is an active thing, not just a feeling. Walking out of the gym, the jars stacked and labeled, it was clear this was a project fueled by love and stubborn optimism, the kind that keeps people showing up for each other.
