WWE stars Jacob Fatu and Joe Hendry took part in a children’s art class on Friday with a nonprofit to support cancer patients.
The two wrestlers teamed up with Red Door Community and a group of kids affected by cancer in a caricature workshop. The organization also held a raffle for two tickets to Saturday Night’s Main Event that’s taking place at Madison Square Garden at 8 p.m.
Fatu and Hendry teamed up with Red Door through the WWE Community Champions program. Red Door Community, headquartered in Flatiron, provides support groups, speaker sessions, wellness workshops and social activities to help people of all ages affected by cancer.
“Anybody at the WWE is really, really big on charity, and these two guys really stood out,” Red Door Community CEO Dan Latore told The Post.
“Organizations like Red Door are so important,” Hendry told People before the event. “It gives the families an opportunity to just have a day away from the stress and to be able to be creative and have fun.”
Red Door Community partners with Theatre Within to provide creative workshops — in the visuals arts, writing and meditation — for members. Former MAD Magazine artist and art director Sam Viviano led the class alongside former MAD editor Joe Raiola.
“We want to do more things like this,” Latore said. “Work with other organizations to do things like this, with different sports leagues. The idea is really to create some excitement around this.
“It’s just so special,” he added.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. also took part in the workshop. Since taking office in 2020, Richards has been a major part of the investment and development of a new cancer center at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
At a recent town hall, Richards shared that $180 million has been secured in partnership with Gov. Kathy Hochul to fund the new center.
“It’s fantastic,” Latore said of Richards’s efforts. “Red Door Community has been around for 30 years, and we consider ourselves a New York icon. … We have membership from all five boroughs, our membership is very reflective of the New York City community.”
Perhaps the brightest moment of the day was giving a young boy two tickets to Saturday night’s WWE event at the Garden at the workshop’s conclusion.
“It just reminded me why I do this,” Latore said of the winning moment. “For all the things that are tough in life, you do a thing like this, and it just wipes it all away.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
