TACO Marine® Project Boat  Raffle Fundraiser, sponsored by TACO Metals® and currently featured on Ship Shape TV, involves a full renovation of a 28-year-old Pursuit 2650 powerboat. The boat will be displayed at the Progressive® Insurance Tampa Boat Show at the Tampa Convention Center September 8-10. Show attendees can purchase raffle tickets for a drawing taking place November 5^th at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. Tickets are $40 each or three for $100, and all proceeds benefit the I’M LOGAN IT Foundation.

The completely refitted boat will be raffled at the 2017 Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show November 5 at approximately 1 p.m. and the proceeds will benefit the I’M LOGAN IT Foundation, created by TACO Marine owners, the Kushner family, in memory of Logan Matthew Kushner. The non-profit foundation raises money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and provides college scholarships for student athletes who exhibit similar values and qualities as Logan, including strong sense of leadership, resilient spirit, team pride, good sportsmanship and helping others.

 

It is because of the generosity of organizations like the I’M LOGAN IT Foundation that JDRF has the ability to make living with type 1 diabetes (T1D) safer and healthier, until there is a cure. The JDRF Tampa Bay Chapter truly appreciates the support of the I’M LOGAN IT Foundation and its annual donations to our organization totaling $65,000 over the past five years. Please know your support impacts the lives of the millions of children, adults and families challenged by T1D every single day.

Every detail of our organization is guided y a simple goal: to lessen the tremendous daily burden of this disease, until it is no longer a threat. That’s why we are busy putting your dollars to work funding research for life-changing advances like glucose-responsive insulin, an artificial pancreas or beta cell replacement therapy, while relentlessly pursuing our vision of creating a world without T1D.

We can assure you that we will stop at nothing until Type One becomes Type None. On behalf of the JDRF Tampa Bay Chapter and millions of people living with T1D, thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Carolyn Boos
Executive Director

www.jdrf.org/tampabay

 

CLEARWATER — P.A. Kushner smiles, and for a moment her face perfectly matches a peeling-at-the-edges picture of her son ironed onto the front of her purple T-shirt. But the moment flashes past. Kushner’s mouth fades back into its worn expression and there are two separate faces again; a dead 19-year-old son, and a mother trapped in mourning.

“Today is the anniversary, but it isn’t any harder than any other day. The pain never goes away,” she said last month, after placing fresh flowers near where her son Logan Kushner died a year ago.

On Jan. 8, 2012, Logan drowned in 14 inches of water in a creek running through Kapok Park. That night, he had used Jazz, a legal form of synthetic marijuana sold in gas stations everywhere. The medical examiner later said it may have contributed to his death.

Kushner, 58, considers it a tragic accident and hopes people will just remember her son. In a very real way, she needs them to.

He was a 19-year-old who still said “I love you, Mommy,” even when his football friends were around. He always invited strangers in the park to join his football game, wrote thank-you notes to the teachers and coaches who inspired him and had a “joy dance” that he performed with shameless abandon to cheer friends up.

The thought that all that could just disappear was unimaginable to his mother. So she and her husband, Mike Kushner, created the I’m Logan It Foundation to promote the art of being Logan.

“I’m Logan It” was a phrase coined by his friends in high school while he was still alive to describe his no-holds-barred love attack on people around him. P.A. Kushner wants to ensure that it continues.

“I’m a member of this club now. A club that you never want to be a member of. Mothers who have lost their child,” Kushner said. “It’s not an amputation. It’s worse than that. It’s like we’ve been cut wide open like a deer, and gutted. … We just keep breathing. You literally feel your heart breaking.”

There are good days and bad days.

On a good day, she remembers that Logan made her a mother, and what greater gift is there? The 19 years, two months and 22 days she had him were a gift. She thinks of all the things she got to experience because of him. Remembers the day his flag football team tie-dyed jerseys in the back yard. They hung them to dry in a long hippie rainbow row on the fence, came in the kitchen exploding with laughter and ate bowls of chili and plates of brownies like a swarm of happy locusts.

On a bad day, she hits what she calls “the wailing wall.” It hits her out of nowhere. In the car, in Publix, in the shower. She wants to pull her hair, punch, scream.

“When you lose a child, you question your past. How could they be gone? Was that child really here? Or was it a dream?” she said. “And then it takes away your future, because as a parent, when you have this child, your dreams change. Your dreams aren’t aspirations of what you’re going to grow up to be. Your dreams are about what your child is going to be.”

That’s why I’m Logan It brings a kind of remedy that all the support groups, books and wonderful friends just can’t. When she sees people living Logan’s example, his future continues, so her future continues. It is the only thing that brings real peace.

She cherishes the emails and stories from his friends who emulated him. Someone paid for a stranger short of change at Starbucks. Someone sat next to a sad woman at the bus stop and learned what was wrong. One mother’s tough guy told his football buddies “I love you.” When they pay it forward Logan style, he lives a bit more. So she lives a bit more.

By John Pendygraft, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Monday, February 4, 2013