Memory of grandmother inspires donation of hair

Mallory Greenberg has already donated 28 inches of her hair to Locks of Love and she plans to keep on donating.

MANALAPAN - If the length of a person's hair is an indication of the size of her heart, Mallory Greenberg's heart must be huge. Mallory, 12, a seventh-grader at the Manalapan-Englishtown Middle School, has donated a total of 28 inches of hair to Locks of Love over a period of two years.

Mallory donated 14 inches of hair when she was 10 and it took her two years to grow another 14 inches of hair so she could do it again. Her mom, Ivy, was given the honor of cutting off Mallory's ponytail at Salon Cemone in Manalapan, and hairdresser Sue Wolf finished the job.

Locks of Love is a nonprofit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children under the age of 18 who are suffering from long-term hair loss due to a medical condition.

Mallory's good deeds extend to more than just donating her hair. Driven by the memory of her grandmother, Lorraine Rosen, who passed away in 2001 from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood, Mallory has been spearheading fundraising efforts to help people with cancer for the past three years.

"When I was in fourth grade (at the Pine Brook School), my teacher said she wanted the class to sell cupcakes to raise money for (the American Cancer Society's) Relay for Life, so I asked if I could make chocolate lollipops and sell them for 25 cents each," Mallory explained. "My teacher said yes and I raised $50. I did it again in fifth grade and raised around the same amount."

In sixth grade Mallory came up with a new idea. She raffled off tickets to a New York Mets game at school and raised a total of $250 which was also donated to Relay for Life.

Mallory said she was nervous about how she would look after she cut her hair, but it was important to her to do it. She gets emotional when she speaks of her grandmother, and explains, "Because Grandma Lorraine had cancer she lost her hair. I know how it feels to lose somebody, so I donated my hair to help kids who are battling cancer so they can feel better about themselves while they are trying to get better."

How does Mallory feel about her new hairstyle?

"I was happy and surprised because my hair was never this short," she said.

Does she plan to do it again? "Yes," Mallory answers without any hesitation.