Katie Reider Updates / Benefits

from Lauren Fernandes who operates:


website: 500,000 hits in 365 for Katie Reider
facebook: 500,000 hits in 365 for Katie Reider
myspace: 500,000 hits in 365 for Katie Reider

Hi!

I hope everyone is doing well. I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that a couple benefits will be held for Katie Reider over the next few weeks. These events will be posted on our myspace site and facebook site as they come about.

All proceeds go directly to Katie's family, hope you can come out and celebrate her music!

If it's possible to have these events filmed for our archive we'd greatly appreciate!

KATIE REIDER BENEFIT INFORMATION

Saturday August 16th, 2008 - 8pm at Below Zero Lounge in Cincinnati Ohio.

THE KATIE REIDER FAMILY Benefit with KAREN REIDER AND ROB REIDER is this Saturday August 16th, 2008 - 8pm at Below Zero Lounge in Cincinnati Ohio.

Come early or come late whatever works for you!
$5 CASH

Hear Katie's music by the musicians who loved her and her music.
.... Katie would love that we celebrate her with music!

More info and a list of upcoming BENEFITS scheduled for Katie Reider are posted on our facebook site

Another News story was also done last Saturday in New York City with Karen Reider.

Last Saturday NYC's local morning news show in NYC re-ran Katie's News story and did an in studio piece with Karen Reider.

Here's a link. Enjoy! (fyi - there is an advertisement that plays before the story airs)

http://wcbstv.com/video/?id=115904@wcbs.dayport.com

Thank you to EVERYONE for all the support - it has been wonderful.

Since May 23rd, 2008 we've reached 59,500 people who have helped keep katie's voice alive!

Till next time

Goodbye Katie

since katie's story and passing has touched so many people, many who only knew her through her words and music and there has been so much interest and such an outpouring of compassion and sympathy for her family and friends, i thought one last goodbye on the day of her memorial service was appropriate.

said well by karin bergquist from "over the rhine": "We are so saddened to learn that Katie has passed away. So young, beautiful and talented. Such a loss for those of us left behind. Our thoughts and prayers are with Katie's family and friends. We cry with you."

peace katie, sleep well.

A Charmed Life’s Cruel End Brings a Test of Faith for Survivors

Katie Reider in 2006. This month she died of a rare tumor at age 30, leaving behind her partner and two young children.
They were three kids from Cincinnati who met in a Christian theater group in the summer of 1995 and spent a lot of time talking about God.

There was Dan Stroeh, tall, athletic, smart, eloquent, the son of a Lutheran minister. There was Karen Boone, a gymnast since age 5 who found God as a junior in high school and seemed wise beyond her years. And there was Katie Reider, beautiful, talented, funny, fearless, sort of the female version of Phineas, the effortlessly perfect alpha male in John Knowles’s “A Separate Peace.” In a group of talented heartland kids, she was the one who lit up the room, surely the most blessed of them all.

And through the years, as college friends, as Karen and Katie became lovers and partners, after Dan presided over the backyard wedding where they ran barefoot together into the future, after the couple moved to Montclair and he to Manhattan, they remained friends and soul mates.

But still, in some ways, they ended up just where they started, three kids from Cincinnati who spent a lot of time talking about God.

There’s really no way to make sense of the horror that befell Katie Reider, a singer/songwriter, with a huge following back home and a growing national fan base, who seemed on the cusp of much larger success when her life was destroyed by a rare tumor that ate into her jaw and face, stole her voice, left her blind in one eye and finally killed her this month at the age of 30.

And surely all of their Bible reading and earnest late-night discussions of God’s plan could not have prepared them for the Job-like tale in which they became players. Still. It sounds like something from the heart, not some rote recitation of received wisdom when Dan and Karen say surely there was some plan, some meaning, even some good in Katie’s nightmare.

“She’d often wonder why God was doing this to her, why God made her suffer so much,” said Karen, who took the last name Reider in 2005 when she became pregnant for the first time. The couple had two children, now ages 2 and 4, using a donor. “Sometimes she’d cry out in pain: ‘God, give me mercy.’ But she never doubted there was a purpose. She never lost her faith. And I have to believe this can be life-changing in a positive way because Katie would have expected nothing less.”

You can pick out the lessons you want from their story. About faith — as balm or as placebo. About love’s unexpected paths, and in this case, in a conservative environment not always accepting of a gay relationship. About medical care: Karen’s employer began including employees’ partners in their health coverage plan in January 2007, and the plan covered what could have been deemed a pre-existing condition. That spared them an insurance and financial catastrophe on top of a personal and medical one.

But it all began with what seemed like a toothache on Valentine’s Day 2006. By that point, Katie had become a local star admired for both her music — part rock, part folk — and for her stage presence. She had a rambunctious sense of humor and an ability to connect to the loneliest person in the back row. She had recorded four CDs, placed songs on shows like “Dawson’s Creek,” and attracted interest from major labels.

“She was always the kind of writer who would crack open her chest and rub her heart raw,” Dan said.

It seemed a bothersome irritation when the tooth problem arose. But then antibiotics, painkillers, steroids, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, radiation, chemotherapy — nothing seemed to work as what was eventually diagnosed as a rare inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor collapsed the left side of her face and attached itself to the blood vessels in her brain. She became too weak to perform; then the tumor ate into her palate so she could no longer sing and could barely speak. Each turn in the road opened to something worse.

Her doctor, Manuel Revuelta, an internist and infectious disease specialist at Beth Israel Medical Center, said he never saw a crueler case or a more remarkable patient: upbeat, full of life, seemingly hopeful throughout. She insisted on being photographed as the disease worsened. It fit her goal of an open, transparent life, and the photographs showed both her disfigured face and an incongruously joyous glint in her good right eye, as if to say, I’m not what I was, but I’m still me.

As her situation became dire, a fan, Lauren Fernandes, hoping to keep Katie’s voice alive and to raise money for her family and medical care, put up a Web site called “500,000 hits in 365 days.”

Katie leaned on family, bandmates, and on Karen and Dan, often literally. He, it turned out, had success as a playwright (which began when he won the Kennedy Center’s 2001 National Student Playwriting Award) and also suffered from ill health in the form of a genetic disorder of the nervous system that left him barely able to walk.

Katie and Dan read from psalms together in the hospital. And when she was up to it, the two old friends, both very old at 30, held onto each other as they tottered down the hospital hall.

Finally, spent, exhausted and out of hope, for the first time unable to look at her face in the mirror, she died on July 14.

Dan said he and Katie talked to the end about embracing uncertainty while feeling in their gut the visceral presence of God.

Katie’s brother, Robbie, also a musician and also steeped in religion, who lost a newborn child a few years back and his mother to multiple cancers as Katie’s health deteriorated, is less sanguine. “What I would have believed five years ago about God and faith is very different from what I believe now,” he said. “Christians are always throwing around lines about how God is good, God is good all the time, and my take on that is, if that’s true, God’s definition of good is very different than mine. I’m still trying to work it out.”

But, then, in their own ways, they all are. On Saturday morning, with Dan presiding, family, friends and fans of Katie will gather at a church in Cincinnati to hear her voice, hear her band, celebrate her life, contemplate heaven and contemplate earth.

And then family members will gather for pizza and beer, her kind of sacrament, just the way she would have wanted to say goodbye.

By PETER APPLEBOME | The New York Times

katie reider - an interview with her father, rob...

a very touching interview with katie's father about her, her life, her music and her brave fight. it's well worth your time to listen.

from wnku.org

Cincinnati entertainer and announcer Rob Reider remembers his daughter, local singer-songwriter Katie, who died on the 14th of July after a two year battle with a rare brain tumor.

Katie's dad, Rob remembers his lovely daughter (© Copyright 2008, WNKU)

katie reider 1978-2008 (follow-up)

to follow up on the june 15th post regarding the passing of katie reider:

A memorial service for Katie Reider will be held Saturday, July 26 at 11 a.m. at Crossroads Community Church, 3500 Madison Rd., Cincinnati, OH 45209

Katie Reider 1978 - 2008

submitted by: bill ivester

a "local" cincinnati/columbus, ohio musician passed away yesterday after a 2+ year bout with cancer. while i didn't know katie well, i had met and talked with her on several occasions, in every single interaction i had with her i found her to be sweet, charming, cheerful and happy...simply a beautiful person. honestly, i always recall seeing her smiling, which is how i'll remember her. and so talented and gifted.

my heartfelt condolences and best wishes to katie's family and loved ones. she fought the brave and good fight against this horrible disease...


Katie Reider-this was from what, sadly & unexpectedly, turned out to be her last show

from the Cincinnati Enquirer
Musician Katie Reider dies
By Lauren Bishop • lbishop@enquirer.com • July 14, 2008

Cincinnati-born singer-songwriter Katie Reider, 30, died Monday morning after a two-year battle with a rare tumor that robbed her of her ability to do what she loved most – perform.

Reider was the daughter of Rob Reider, best known as the band leader on the Cincinnati-based syndicated entertainment program “The Bob Braun Show” in the 1970s and ’80s, and Gaile Reider, who died of cancer in August 2007 at age 58.

“The mother and child reunion going on in heaven right now must be unbelievable,” her father said Monday from his Montgomery home.

Katie Reider, one of five children, grew up in Montgomery surrounded by music. She received her first guitar, a red Gibson Epiphone, from her parents when she was in fifth grade.

Reider developed a folk-pop style that’s been compared to Sarah McLachlan, Ani DiFranco and Shawn Colvin.

Janet Pressley, a singer-songwriter and co-founder of Reider’s label, Blue Jordan Records, recalled seeing Reider perform at the now-closed Blue Jordan Coffeehouse in Northside in about 1993. Reider was then in high school at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy.

“She had the pipes then,” Pressley said. Blue Jordan released three of Reider’s albums: “Wonder” (1998), “No Retakes” (2001) and “I Am Ready” (2002). She asked her father to co-produce and engineer her last album, “Simplicity” (2004), which features her brother Robbie on guitar. Reider performed everywhere from small cafés to big events, including Taste of Cincinnati and the Tall Stacks Music, Arts & Heritage Festival. She won five local music awards and gained national recognition when her songs were used on ABC, Lifetime and the WB series “Dawson’s Creek.” In the midst of working on her fifth album and touring, Reider went to the dentist in February 2006 for what she thought was a toothache. After multiple diagnoses and treatments, doctors diagnosed her in June 2007 with a rare myofibroblastic inflammation tumor that had progressed from her sinus and upper left jaw to behind her left eye. The non-cancerous growth left Reider blind in her left eye and took away her ability to speak clearly and sing. Treatment included multiple rounds of chemotherapy, which nearly shrank the tumor in its entirety.

Throughout her illness, Reider stayed connected with her friends and fans by posting updates on her blog, www.myspace.com/katiereiderband. In her last entry, posted June 21, Reider talked about having a “strange cough” that required her to take antibiotics through a feeding tube. But she could still eat some food by mouth.

“I have found that nothing is more tasty than an avocado or a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese,” she wrote.

She also wrote about how much she enjoyed a June vacation with her partner, Karen Reider and their two sons to Rob Reider’s house in Maine.

While on vacation in Bethany Beach, Del., over the Fourth of July holiday, Reider began to hemorrhage from a major artery in her brain as the tumor dislodged.

Doctors were able to stop the bleeding and scheduled surgery for August to remove the rest of the tumor and reconstruct the left side of her face and upper palate.

But the bleeding started again Sunday, and Reider died just before 7 a.m. Monday in an ambulance that was taking her from a hospital near her home in Montclair, N.J., to Beth Israel Hospital in New York City.

In May, fan and friend Lauren Fernandes launched a Web site, http://www.500Kin365.org" target="_blank">www.500Kin365.org, where fans can donate $1 for a digital compilation of nine of Reider’s original songs. All proceeds from the compilation and private donations will continue to help Reider’s family pay her medical bills and funeral arrangements, which are pending.

In addition to her father, survivors include her partner of 10 years, Karen, of Montclair, N.J.; their sons, Aiden, 3, and Koen, 1; two brothers, Robbie, 33, of Norwood; and Andy, 23, a pastoral studies major at the College of Mount St. Joseph; and three sisters, Kristin, 39, of New York state; Abby, 27, of Indiana; and Beth, 25, of California.

Service arrangements are pending