TONI'S STORY:

The seed of the Here's To Life Foundation sprouted for me in the sixth grade. I was sitting next to a despondent classmate I barely knew named Jan Anderson. She was very sad about something, I didn't know what. I didn't ask, but I felt her pain. I drew a simple picture on her notebook. It was a tree of life and I wrote her name along the top branch and told her she was one of a kind, and that if she hung on, things would get better. I took a ring from my finger and gave it to her in friendship.

After the incident with Jan, I began to notice that many of the new kids in my junior high school, including foreign exchange students and the labeled "freaks and geeks," felt sad, alone and isolated from everyone else. With my mom's help, I created monthly luncheons at my house to include this potpourri of wonderfully diverse teens, each having something unique and special to offer. I mixed them in with the "popular crowd" of which I was one. At first, the "beautiful people" of my junior high in North Caldwell, New Jersey, thought I was nuts. But, the luncheons became incredibly stimulating, bursting with ideas, laughter, creativity, joy and new friendships. I still hear from many of the members today, expressing how much these dialogues helped shaped their lives.

The principal of my high school put me in charge of new students, including the foreign exchange students and the mentally challenged "gang in room 54". I was lucky to work with this group of kids. Just by looking through their eyes, I gained incredible insight into a non cognitive way of thinking and creating. It was through them that I developed a incredible reverence for every creature of God.

Years later, when we were both grown up, I received a letter from Jan, thanking me for saving her life. She told me she still wore the friendship ring I had given her all those years ago.

I wanted to devote my life to helping people through the humanities and theatre. I never thought I wanted to get married. Little did I know I could do both.

Gene Bua changed my life forever. He had been hired as my co-star on CBS's daytime drama, Love of Life. As America watched us fall in love and get married on TV, life imitated art. Gene captured my heart and soul. I became his wife and the lyricist to his beautiful music. At night in many New York cabarets, we sang about world peace, brother and sisterhood.

After ten years of being soap stars, Gene and I followed a dream and opened the Gene Bua Acting for Life Theatre in Burbank, California. Gene became a master teacher and acting coach. His teaching technique combined mind, body and spirit and his acting classes filled with eager students, yearning to learn about their craft and themselves.

One day, a beautiful young girl, named Andre, joined the class. She seemed perfect in every way. Every time we would ask her how she was, she would smile and say, "fine." But, as her walls came tumbling down in class, we saw the pain and loneliness she was hiding. I knew in my heart that so many people, especially teenagers, would say they are "fine", when they were really not.

I wrote a story about girls like Andre, and named it "Pepper Street"…"the most perfect street in America, where everyone is just fine." To our delight and surprise, the story, along with our 19 original songs, rang true to thousands and Pepper Street became the longest running musical in Los Angeles during the 80's. We were able to sponsor over 3000 teens at risk and to create "Youth Suicide Awareness" month in Los Angeles.

For five years, we greeted bus loads of extremely "at-risk" teens from residential and non-residential treatment centers, arriving with their therapists, to spend two hours with "The Perfect People of Pepper Street." At the end of the performance, the cast, crew, creators and audience would stay to "share" the explosive and life changing feelings the musical had opened up. One of these houses was Penny Lane Residential Treatment Center:

Thank you for saving my life. Until tonight I had lost all hope and was going to kill myself. Now I know I'm not alone. There's only one me, and the only way for people to see how special I am is to stick around, so watch out world, you're going to hear a lot from me.

Love, Alison

Gene and I, together with Penny Lane's Program Director, Claire Bowman, created a sponsorship program. Gene brought several of his working actors to the teen facility to teach a "new way of expression" to the "worst of the worst".

Out of this outreach program, our new musical, "Second Wind" was born. The tools and principles that Gene's Acting for Life program teaches are combined with a story, inspired by the teens of Penny Lane, whom we all came to love. They teach psychological alchemy: changing base feelings into gold; how to harness the rage, hate, fear, longing and hopelessness of today's lost youths into hope, self esteem, compassion and positive life choices, for the benefit of themselves and their communities.

In the song "On Wings", from "Second Wind", a boy lies dying from a  senseless shooting. His "teacher" calls out to us for help: "Hopelessness, unconsciousness, have we not had enough of this…"

I hear that call. I've always heard it. Now, Gene and I, and the brilliant, passionate team of people who have gathered for the Here's To Life Foundation have faith you will hear it also.

"I can feel a second wind begin to move me once again;