One of Our Own: Why We're Raising Lemonade Money This July

This month, Oakes Auto Group is hosting lemonade stands across our locations to support Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation. It's easy to talk about a cause in the abstract. It's harder - and a lot more real - when it's someone you work with.

Bryan Hendrich manages our Finance Control Desk. A few years ago, his youngest son, Quintyn (Q), was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He was two and a half years old.

It started with a fever

Q had a fever that came and went for weeks. Tylenol would knock it down, it would come back a few days later. Urgent care chalked it up to something viral going around with the change of season. Nobody was thinking the worst, because why would you?

Then one night his fever spiked again and he wouldn't stop crying. He was in real pain. Bryan and his wife guessed it was constipation. The next morning, she took him to the pediatrician instead.

That's when everything changed. The pediatrician suspected leukemia and sent them straight to Children's Mercy. By midnight, it was confirmed: acute ALL, and Q was in the very high-risk category. A normal white blood count is around 10,000 to 12,000. Doctors start using the word leukemia around 40,000. Q's was 115,000.

"I'm like, 'What is leukemia?'" Bryan said, remembering the phone call from his wife, Brandi. "We're still in shock. Like, what's going on? Is my kid gonna die?"

Three and a half years of treatment

Q got a port installed that day and started chemo the next. The first year was brutal, heavy chemo, hair loss, a three-year-old too sick to do anything but sit on the couch and throw up. For a while, his immune system was essentially gone.

"We joked around during COVID because we were kind of like COVID before COVID at our house," Bryan said. Masks for visitors, clothes off at the door, showers before anyone touched him.

The good news came fast, relatively speaking: Q hit remission in about 45 days, which meant no bone marrow transplant would be needed as long as he stayed there. He has. Treatment lasted three and a half years total, tapering down each year, until January 2025 marked five years off treatment - the point where he's considered cured.

Q is 13 now. He plays it cool about the port scar on his chest. Asked about it at the pool recently, he told another kid he got it in a bar fight.

Where Alex's Lemonade Stand fit in

A lot of organizations helped the Hendrich family during those years - toys and games showed up in their hospital room constantly, and they did a Make-A-Wish trip Bryan still calls fantastic. But Alex's Lemonade Stand stands out for one specific reason: SuperSibs.

Q wasn't the only kid in that house. His older brother, Zaidyn (Z), was five when Q was diagnosed, and for the next few years, Q got whatever he wanted or needed, understandably. SuperSibs sent Z care packages every month, so he had things that were his, and didn't get lost in the shuffle of a family built around his brother's treatment.

"I could imagine from our oldest side of it during that time, not understanding why his brother's getting all this stuff and attention and he's not," Bryan said. "They made sure he felt included and not left out."

Why this matters beyond one family

Bryan put a number to it that's hard to shake: only about 4% of federally allocated cancer research funding goes toward childhood cancers, according to the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation. Four percent.

"Why wouldn't you want to support a two-year-old, three-year-old, four-year-old, that child that's supposed to be loving life and living life, sitting in a hospital room getting chemo?" he said.

That's what this July's lemonade stands are for. Not a huge ask - a few dollars for a cup of lemonade - going toward research and support for families who are somewhere in the middle of a story like Bryan's right now.

Stop by one of our lemonade stands this month, grab a lemonade, and know it's going somewhere that matters. Bryan and his family are proof of what that support can do.

Lemonade Stand Dates:

• July 17, 12PM-4PM - Oakes Kia NKC

• July 24, 12PM-4PM - Oakes GMC

• July 31, 12PM-4PM - Oakes Kia of Olathe

Can't make it to a stand? You can still donate directly here: alexslemonade.org/2026/oakes-auto/donate