Cheryl Romano Raychel McCabe, left, hands a $1,000 check to Waldport High student Alex Herd, first recipient of a scholarship from the Lillian Fund. Standing are Alex’s parents, Gary and Sara Herd, and Anne Irwin, mother of the late Lillian Fawcett, in whose memory McCabe started the fund.

By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com

WALDPORT – For the past four years the owner of a Waldport coffee stand has donated all her proceeds on July 21 to a special cause — a scholarship fund in memory of former employee Lillian Christina Fawcett.

The date is Fawcett’s birthday. She only got to celebrate 20 of them.

The Waldport High School graduate was killed in a car crash on Highway 34 near Tidewater on June 2, 2018, just weeks before her 21^st birthday. At the time she was a very popular barista at The Beachside Buzz, the drive-through coffee shop along U.S. Highway 101 on the south side of Waldport.

Her boss, owner Raychel McCabe, was determined to do more than grieve.

“Lillian had a huge following of supporters who just adored her,” said McCabe, a Yachats resident. In discussing Fawcett’s death with her partner and two eldest daughters, McCabe remembers, “We thought, ‘How can we best honor her and her life?’ and came up with the scholarship fund.”

The first recipient is Alex Herd, a Waldport High student who received $1,000 this month to help him attend a theater camp in California. The son Gary and Sara Herd – he’s a muralist and actor and she works for Lincoln County Public Health — Alex posted his financial need on a local Facebook page, and McCabe responded.

“We wanted our money to go to people who weren’t taking the traditional path — young artists or musicians, or young queer people, people who weren’t necessarily headed for college,” said McCabe.

She runs the fund in conjunction with an unofficial board of advisers: Waldport High teachers Alex Browne and Dominic Scharp, and Lillian’s mother, Anne Irwin.

The fund began as a simple request for donations, spread through social media and word-of-mouth. To augment it, McCabe started selling “Lillian University” T-shirts, a nod to the young woman’s habit of wearing various university tees at work.

“Lillian was a musician, a stoner, and queer,” McCabe said. “A friend of mine who owned a shirt company came up with a beautiful logo featuring a rainbow, ‘pot’ leaves and a guitar.”

Sales from those tees, stickers bearing the same logo plus donations that trickle in through the year, have swelled the Lillian Fund to over $10,000. McCabe is now working on setting up the fund as a formal non-profit organization.

“… this girl meant so much to them”

Fawcett attended Waldport High with McCabe’s two daughters, and went through a rough patch after graduating in 2015. Hearing of her situation, McCabe asked her if she wanted to work at Beachside Buzz.

“I wanted her to be in a place that loved and supported her; she became like a daughter to me,” McCabe said, including spending holidays with the shop owner and her family.

During the two years of work, McCabe said Fawcett came out of her shell, watching her “grow into the funny, intelligent, beautiful woman she was becoming. Her death was a huge shock.”

“It’s been incredible to see the love and support … ” said McCabe. “People who just had two-to-three-minute interactions with Lillian at a coffee window come back year after year on July 21 because this girl meant so much to them. She’s had a long-term impact on this community.

“She was so charismatic and charming; just genuine and kind,” said McCabe. “I want people to know that love should have no boundaries. I think Lily was a perfect example of that. Some people in her life missed out, because they couldn’t see past her queerness.”

Weeks after Fawcett’s fatal accident, McCabe launched the July 21 fundraiser that was to grow over the next three years. Next Thursday — July 21 — Beachside Buzz will again donate its proceeds to the Lillian Fund. This will include money from cupcakes donated by McCabe’s baker/vendor, as well as from T-shirt and sticker sales.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” McCabe said. “It really planted the seed, though; since the Lillian Fund first started, we’ve done several other fundraisers, one for a young boy with a rare form of cancer, one during Black History Month … it’s important to give back when we can.”

Despite the “bickering” in town that sometimes makes headlines, said McCabe “When it comes down to it, this community comes together like no other I’ve ever seen.”