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It has become a beloved ritual at Dana-Farber: Every day, children who come to the clinic write their names on sheets of paper and tape them to the windows of the walkway for ironworkers to see. And, every day, the ironworkers paint the names onto I-beams and hoist them into place as they add floors to the new 14-story Yawkey Center for Cancer Care.
The building\'s steel skeleton is now a brightly colored, seven-story monument to scores of children receiving treatment at the clinic.
For the young cancer patients, who press their noses to the glass to watch new names added every day, the steel and spray-paint tribute has given them a few moments of joy and a towering symbol of hope.
"Everybody saw the kids smiling," said Mike Walsh, the foreman for the ironworkers, from Local 7, whose wife, Sheila, is a nurse at Dana-Farber. "And that\'s what you want to do, is keep them smiling, especially if they\'re going for treatment in there."
Construction worker Dana Morss wrote a name on a beam.
Most days, the walkway fills up like the passageway of an aquarium, packed with children gazing through the glass. When a new name goes up on the building, the children cheer and clap.
The ironworkers made a similar tribute in 1996, when they painted the names of young cancer patients on beams they used to build the Smith Research Laboratories at Dana-Farber.
Over the last month, the ironworkers have painted more than 100 names on the building and emblazoned part of their crane with a likeness of SpongeBob SquarePants. They have also painted a few special messages on the steel, like "Hi Hanna Get Well ASAP
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Wow, very touching.
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Great post. Awesome.
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my boss wouldn\'t allow us to spend our day spray painting the I beams. its not efficient enough.
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