Nina Marshall
On Thursday, December 12, singer and songwriter Mitchell Tenpenny brought Christmas cheer to The American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge on Charlotte Avenue when he performed before a small crowd of residing outpatients and their families.
The Lodge’s open plan first floor, where Tenpenny and his bandmates, Dylan Hester (guitar) and Braxton Pearson (cajon), were staged, underwent a four-month renovation upgrading its kitchen and seating area which ended in early November 2019.
Nina Marshall
Meanwhile, three floors up, plans were being made and carried out regarding Tenpenny’s day room, which unveiled on November 10th. With its mountainy skyline mural and cozy, Country chic-themed furniture, the space is ideal for patients, their families, and their caretakers needing to relax outside of a hospital environment. The Telling All My Secrets-singer linked with his parent label Sony Music Nashville and the Sarah Cannon Research Institute to bring the idea to life.
“We all know cancer feeds on stress,” Tenpenny, who lost his father to the disease five years ago, says after his set. “Our goal is to make them feel as little of that as possible. That’s why we wanted to do a room like this, to help them maybe forget about it for a while. Getting rid of stress is, you know, that’s your best chance in the world of fighting this.”
The refurbs on the first and fourth floors of Nashville’s ACS Hope Lodge were the first half of a larger capital campaign, which is currently raising money to complete more projects including work on the 41 night rooms, where patients and their caretakers live for 6-8 week durations depending on the length of their treatment. Opened in 2004, the lodge operates completely on donations, so stakes are high when notable entities, like artists or sports teams (The Predators opened a day room on the third floor) get involved.
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Nina Marshall
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Nina Marshall
Tenpenny did so through his organization, The 10Penny Fund (est. 2018), which raises money to provide support services for people undergoing cancer treatment and which officially partnered with Sarah Cannon in July 2019. When Hope Lodge expressed interest in working with someone in music, the team at Sarah Cannon responded, according to Hope Lodge Senior Manager Michele Ryan, “we’ve got just the songwriter.”
“People know how close cancer is to me,” Tenpenny says. “When we decided to do something like this, it just sort of all fell together once the idea was out there, you know? You don’t think it will, but God does it.”
Tenpenny’s short acoustic concert on the first floor was provided with hot chocolate and holiday sweets, which matched the against-the-odds cheerful spirit in the rest of the lounge — night rooms doors were placarded with giftwrapping paper and bows, outsized Christmas trees glistened on multiple floors, and, as it does year-round, the happy reality that places like ACS’ Hope Lodge exist kept spirits high.
“I met a guy down there today who told me he was from Louisville,” Tenpenny says of talking with patients after his show.
“He said, “I need to be back home in Kentucky, but this is the best place I can be for my mom’s situation.’ And that just kind of sunk me, you know? And reminded me why I wanted to do this here. This is a place in town where families can come and not have to worry about anything. Because that’s such a big part of it. I remember.”