City Bay Ridge

Quaglione urges shoppers to support March of Dimes

August 10, 2017 By Paula Katinas Brooklyn Daily Eagle
John and Kerry Quaglione and their daughters Natalie and Olivia are pictured with Ashleigh Carney, assistant store manager of Macy’s Herald Square at a kickoff event for the Shop For A Cause program. Photo courtesy of March of Dimes
John and Kerry Quaglione and their daughters Natalie and Olivia are pictured with Ashleigh Carney, assistant store manager of Macy’s Herald Square at a kickoff event for the Shop For A Cause program. Photo courtesy of March of Dimes
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A Bay Ridge father of two who takes part every year in the March for Babies event sponsored by the March of Dimes is encouraging Brooklyn residents to support the organization by going shopping at Macy’s.

John Quaglione, deputy chief of staff to state Sen. Marty Golden (R-C-Bay Ridge-Southwest Brooklyn), is the co-chairman of the newly formed Brooklyn Chapter of the March of Dimes New York. He is also a Republican candidate for City Council in the 43rd District (Bay Ridge-Dyker Heights-Bensonhurst).

Quaglione and his wife Kerry, who is the assistant principal of P.S. 127 in Bay Ridge, are enthusiastic supporters of the 12th Annual Macy’s Shop for a Cause program, an event that allows customers to donate money to the March of Dimes and receive special discounts on selected items.

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The sale began on Aug. 10 and will be going on through Aug. 13.

The Macy’s stores located at Herald Square in Manhattan and at Kings Plaza and Downtown Brooklyn are among the stores featuring the Shop for a Cause event.

Under the program, customers can purchase a $5 coupon to receive special store discounts. The $5 is donated to the March of Dimes. Customers who purchase the weekend savings pass will receive 25 percent off on wide variety of items.

The March of Dimes needs the donations, according to Quaglione.

“Over 21,000 babies were born premature in New York State last year, one in 10 babies, and prematurity is the Number One killer of babies in the United States,” he told the Brooklyn Eagle last year.

The Quagliones participate every year in the March for Babies walk-a-thon in Manhattan to help raise money for the March of Dimes, the nationwide organization founded in 1938 to help premature babies and infants with birth defects. Last year, the couple raised nearly $5,000.

The Quagliones call their walk-a-thon group “Team Natalie” after their older daughter, Natalie Grace, who was two months premature when she was born in 2011. The couple has a second daughter, Olivia.

Back in 2011, John and Kerry Quaglione had to visit Natalie Grace in the neonatal intensive care unit at New York Methodist Hospital, where the baby was kept in an incubator, attached to a spider web of tubes.

The loving care that Natalie Grace received at the hospital, along with the emotional support they were given by the hospital’s staff, is something the couple will always remember, John Quaglione said.

The Quagliones decided to give back by raising money for the March of Dimes.

Given his family’s outstanding fundraising efforts, John Quaglione was asked by the New York City chapter of the March of Dimes to head up a new Brooklyn chapter in 2016.

“The March of Dimes New York chapter noticed at the marches that a lot of the people participating were from Brooklyn. And there is a lot of enthusiasm among the parents in Brooklyn about having our own chapter,” Quaglione told the Eagle at the time.

 


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