Holliston husband and wife Jamie Eastman and Hannah DeCelles, along with their friend Margaret Gildea, are running the 2025 Boston Marathon® on the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge (DFMC) team. 

Eastman was diagnosed with Lymphoma in September 2024. Since his diagnosis, he has been receiving chemotherapy treatments both at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and locally at the Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center at Milford Regional Medical Center. 

He is expected to complete chemotherapy treatments in January 2025 and will cap off his “kick cancer” status by running the Boston Marathon on Patriots’ Day, Monday, April 21.

Eastman joined the Holliston Fire Department in 2023 as a member of the ambulance corps and serves as a per diem paramedic and the EMS training coordinator. He also works full-time as a flight nurse-paramedic with Boston MedFlight, a nonprofit organization that provides critical care air medical and ground transport for the most critically ill and injured patients in the region. Eastman also serves in the United States Army Reserve as a critical care and emergency nurse. 

DeCelles, a native of North Smithfield, RI, moved to Holliston with her husband in 2020. She works as a nurse at UMass Memorial Health - Milford Regional Medical Center in the Nursing Education Department. She is not only running the Boston Marathon in support of her husband, but also her mother who survived Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) and received treatment from Dana Farber Cancer Institute for over two years. 

Gildea, a native of Bridgewater, and now of Colchester, VT, is a long-time college friend of DeCelles and Eastman. The three attended the University of Vermont, College of Nursing and Health Sciences. She plans to run the Boston Marathon in solidarity with Eastman and DeCelles. Gildea worked as a medical technologist at a cancer treatment facility in Colorado. She is running for her patients and family members who have also battled cancer.  

Please consider donating to support their mission to kick cancer and support the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. They need your help to reach their team goal of raising $42,000. 

A tax-deductible donation can be made via their team fundraising page http://danafarber.jimmyfund.org/goto/jamieeastman

Checks can be made payable to DFMC and dropped at the Holliston Fire Department Monday through Friday between the hours of 8 AM and 4 PM, in an envelope addressed to the attention of Jamie Eastman.

All funds raised by DFMC benefit the Claudia Adams Barr Program in Innovative Basic Cancer Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, widely recognized as one of the largest and most successful programs of its kind. Based on a rigorous and highly selective process, the program funds the brightest, most creative scientists making basic research discoveries that are transforming cancer treatment. Claudia Adams Barr Program Investigators have made numerous major breakthroughs resulting in improved survival rates and quality of life for thousands of patients everywhere. Investigators have made, and continue to make, amazing advances in diverse areas of cancer research. For example, Kimberly Stegmaier, MD, and colleagues developed a novel approach to researching how drugs currently used for one cancer might be highly effective in treating other cancers in completely unanticipated ways. This breakthrough led to the discovery that the drug Gefitinib, used initially only for a type of chronic leukemia, could be effective for acute leukemias and led directly to a promising new clinical trial at Dana-Farber