EasCorp's Credit Union's Kids at Heart program provided $50,000 for cancer research last month as the presenting sponsor of the New England Celebrities Tackle Cancer Gala in Foxboro, Mass. The annual event has been associated with CU Kids at Heart since it was started three years ago by the Joe Andruzzi Foundation. This year's event raised $272,115 for the cause, and CU Kids at Heart's donation will specifically benefit the CJ Buckley Brain Cancer Research Fund at Children's Hospital Boston.

Joe Andruzzi, a former football player for the New England Patriots, started the CJ Buckley Brain Cancer Research Fund with his wife, Jen, in 2003, after befriending the terminally ill young man and his family. In 2007, Joe Andruzzi was diagnosed with and later cured of Burkitt's lymphoma, and the next year he and his wife founded the Joe Andruzzi Foundation to raise money for pediatric brain cancer research and to give financial assistance to patients and their families.

Thomas White, CEO of the $1 billion Rockland Federal Credit Union of Rockland, Mass., presented the check to Andruzzi onstage at the gala along with his daughter Susan White, a patient at Children's Hospital of Boston and long-time advocate of the CU Kids at Heart program.