Charlotte was our miracle baby,” says Canyon resident Stephanie Price. In late October, she and her husband, Joe, will celebrate Charlotte’s brief life at the Sunshine for Charlotte 5K and Fun Run in the Medi-Park area, benefiting Ronald McDonald House Charities of Amarillo.
Charlotte lived only 12 days in 2016, but her short life and legacy continues to help area families thanks to this highly successful fundraiser and the work of RMHC. “The Price family has so incredibly blessed our families by choosing to honor the memory of their precious Charlotte in such a meaningful and generous way,” says Shelley Cunningham, executive director of the organization. This is the fourth year the Prices have partnered with RMHC, and this annual race has already raised more than $100,000 for the families the organization serves.
The Ronald McDonald House opened its new building in Amarillo in summer 2021. The previous year, fundraising by the Sunshine for Charlotte race had raised enough money to sponsor one of the guest suites in the house. “There’s a room in honor of Charlotte here in the House that serves families across the Texas Panhandle, eastern New Mexico, the Oklahoma Panhandle and beyond that have to travel here to get medical care,” says Luke Oliver, marketing manager for RMHC.
Charlotte’s room is Room 10. “It’s room 10 because she was born in October,” Stephanie says. And because of that funding, families who stay in that room never have to pay a dime for those accommodations.
It’s an enormous, ongoing impact for a little girl with a short life.
Her Little Heart
Stephanie Price had a normal pregnancy until fall 2016. At the time, Price was marketing director for Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, and had appeared on the local news that morning, feeling fine. Later in the day, however, her blood pressure had begun rising. She considered lying down to rest, but her husband Joe—the Canyon city manager—convinced her to go to the doctor.
That was a good decision. “My blood pressure was up in the 190s,” Stephanie remembers. “I was a few minutes from a stroke.” The condition, preeclampsia, can be dangerous for both the mother and baby.
Stephanie ended up being admitted to the hospital and remembers the moment, as her blood pressure kept climbing, when the room transformed from a standard “get some rest” scenario into a high-stress environment. “Everybody kind of gets quiet. Everybody starts moving around you and things get a little numb,” she says.
Eventually, hospital staff rushed Stephanie into an emergency C-section and Charlotte was born on Oct. 25, 2016, at 29 weeks. 
A lot of babies are born premature. In fact, modern neonatal care gives babies born as early as 29 weeks a 90 to 95 percent survival rate. Stephanie and Joe had every reason to be hopeful for Charlotte’s development. “They really just thought she was going to be a preemie,” she says of the medical team. Then a round of tests revealed otherwise.
Charlotte had transposition of the great arteries, a serious, congenital heart defect in which the pulmonary artery and aorta are switched, causing oxygen-poor blood to circulate throughout the body. For preemies like Charlotte—already fragile and with underdeveloped organs—the condition is exceedingly dangerous.
The local medical team elected to send Charlotte and the family to Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth, where she ended up in a specialized neonatal intensive care unit with round-the-clock nursing care. Initially, Charlotte made strides in a positive direction, but a series of complications—a feeding tube, a punctured stomach, then kidney failure—set her back.
“Her little heart wasn’t working,” Stephanie says. “It was just too hard on her.” After several days at Cook Children’s, the Prices faced every parent’s nightmare. “We made the decision that we would rather her go peacefully, with us, than be hooked up to a bunch of machines and [endure] this really horrible kind of trauma moment, right?”
On Nov. 6, Joe and Stephanie said goodbye to Charlotte, 12 days after she was born.
Paying It Forward
While in Fort Worth, the Prices had been staying at the local Ronald McDonald House. These nonprofit facilities are located near hospitals all over the United States, designed to assist families forced to travel to access medical care for children. Stephanie and Joe had booked a room there because they didn’t know how long Charlotte would be at Cook Children’s. “Obviously, hotels every night are expensive, plus medical bills,” she says. 
They called the House where they were staying after Charlotte passed. “They were so wonderful,” Stephanie says. The staff there packed up the family’s room, organized and cleaned all their belongings, “and never charged us a dime.”
The family still gets birthday cards from that Ronald McDonald House on Charlotte’s birthday.
“After the initial grief and shock and harsh pain wore off, we decided that we wanted to do something to honor Charlotte’s short life,” Stephanie says today. “We felt like it was our job to pay that forward for other families, who we hope get to take their kids home.”
Stephanie went on what she calls “a health journey” after Charlotte’s death, becoming a runner and losing 100 pounds. The couple launched the Sunshine for Charlotte 5K and Fun Run in 2018, and in 2020 decided to use the event to fundraise for Amarillo’s RMHC. “Our Ronald McDonald House doesn’t necessarily have all the resources that Fort Worth has because of the big corporations there,” she says. “They’ve just been absolutely incredible to work with and do this for.”
Brandy Sanchez, the vice president and general manager at KAMR, had become one of Stephanie’s running friends. As the idea for the race developed, the news station agreed to sponsor most of the event’s expenses. Atmos Energy has covered the costs of the medals. Other local businesses help with sponsorships and donations, which allows the event’s registration fees for the 5K, fun run, and kids’ race to go directly to the Amarillo RMHC.
The organization’s own Oliver, himself a runner, participates in Sunshine for Charlotte. “I’ve run in the event the last two years,” he says. “It’s really one of the most fun events because it’s catered toward competitive runners in the area—which, there are so many of us—but it’s also a big, family-friendly event where kids can show up in costume, bring the whole family, bring the dogs, and have a big party in the parking lot.”
This year’s Sunshine for Charlotte event is Oct. 26, and the proximity to Halloween is part of the fun. Kids (and some adults) wear costumes. Families hand out candy and treats from the trunks of their cars. “It’s a great way to get people all across the community to rally behind the Price family, remember Charlotte, and do that in a way that raises funds and awareness for other families in the area with sick or injured children,” Oliver says.
In recent months, the Price family has used fundraising from past events to install a toddler playground at the Ronald McDonald House. Many families staying at the house have babies in the local NICU, but those children often have older siblings. “They need places to play and places that are safe,” Stephanie says. That playground is under construction now, and the organization hopes to unveil it at a ribbon-cutting the week prior to Sunshine for Charlotte.
When Skies are Gray
October marks Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, a time dedicated to raising awareness of the parenting challenges and grief related to stillbirth, miscarriage and the loss of infants like Charlotte. For Joe and Stephanie Price and their family—which now includes two little girls, Charlotte’s sisters—it’s the perfect time to honor Charlotte and raise money for an organization that has been so meaningful.
“We honor Charlotte, but we also honor all of our friends,” Stephanie says—friends who may be running for children they’ve lost or other loved ones. Participants purchase yard signs on the racecourse with the names of those loved ones.
“When you lose a baby, you build a community of people you never thought you’d have,” she adds. “It’s a really hard community to be in, obviously, but one that we treasure. It has provided us a really safe haven to talk to other people who’ve been through our experience.”
During the last few days of her short life, when Stephanie would say goodnight to Charlotte in the Cook Children’s NICU, she would sing a song to her. It was the American folk song, “You are My Sunshine,” and that memory is behind the race name, Sunshine for Charlotte.
Most people think of it as a heartfelt song with a happy melody, but the lyrics are melancholy. “You make me happy when skies are gray,” the chorus says, before concluding with a plea. “You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
Death took Charlotte from Stephanie and Joe, but they’ve made sure her life brings hope to other families at the Ronald McDonald House—families who may be facing the gray skies of a child’s hospital stay.
The sunshine of her legacy continues.
