ANDOVER – The first time Eliza Healey sang with Voices of Hope she was five months pregnant.
The 2010 concert was at Symphony Hall in Boston, and she felt her son dancing within her.
“He seemed to love the music,” she says of Jack, who is now 13 years old and a multi- instrumentalist with perfect pitch.
Healey, of North Reading, joined the Andover-based performing arts troupe that had been founded just a year earlier to raise money for cancer research.
Fourteen years later she remains, directing holiday caroling and serving as music librarian.
Voices of Hope has 150 members from the Merrimack Valley, North Shore and beyond. They sing and perform, including annual musical theater productions.
All of them have been affected by cancer in one way or another.
Twelve-year member Anna Silva – originally from the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago, and now residing in Reading – is a costume designer and singer for the troupe.
On this afternoon, she sits in the lobby as fellow Voices of Hope members rehearse behind her in the sanctuary at Ballard Vale United Church in Andover, the nonprofit’s home base.
Others in the troupe are practicing downstairs. They’re all volunteers, with some, including directors and officers, working the equivalent of full- and part-time hours.
Silva has been singing and designing costumes her whole life.
Her dad is a musician. Her grandmother was a seamstress, and her mom still is one.
Her cancer story goes back to when she was 27 when she was married to Charles Pike, whom she had known since childhood.
Pike was diagnosed with bone cancer at age 30. A year later, he died.
“I came out of that wanting to help raise funds for research because I didn’t want someone else to have to say goodbye so young,” Silva says.
Common ground
At Voices of Hope, sharing stories about the ways in which lives have been changed by cancer has been woven into the organization since its beginning in 2009.
It’s customary shortly after the cast has been selected for each production to form a circle and, one by one, tell their cancer stories.
Founder and President Greg Chastain has a cardinal tattoo on his right wrist and the word “hope” on his left wrist.
A family of cardinals was nesting at the Indiana home of his mother, Barbara Byrd, while she was receiving treatment for pancreatic cancer.
Invariably, the telephone conversations between Chastain and his mom veered from the harsh realities of cancer treatment to the cardinals’ nest, the fledglings’ progress.
Today, the red cardinal is a ubiquitous Voices of Hope symbol.
In the lobby at Ballard Vale United Church stands a cardinal tree — panels on a Japanese room divider that sport new birds with each production. Cast members sign the red cardinal cutouts. They affix red cardinal magnets to their vehicles and wear shirts and hats emblazoned with the bird. Voices of Hope posters and programs also bear the songbird.
In spring 2009, Greg Chastain returned for the last weekend of a production of “Aida” in Arlington after attending his mother’s funeral.
A cast conversation, as the members welcomed him back, led to the singers and actors discovering how many of them had been affected by cancer.
“I realized that the family I had found in the theater could be a source of great healing,” Chastain says.
Out of that recognition came the impetus for Chastain and his friends to host a single event, a fundraiser to support the medical community’s work to extend and save lives of cancer patients. They raised and donated $17,000.
“From that first performance, I knew this was too powerful to be a one-time event,” Chastain says.
Now, the group presents a spring Broadway musical at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly and a fall gala show, which this year was held at the Collins Center for the Performing Arts in Andover.
They sing the national anthem at TD Garden, Fenway Park, Gillette Stadium and other major sporting event venues. Healey directs the anthem singing.
Making a difference
Voices of Hope has raised more than $1.1 million for cancer research since its founding, $979,000 of it going directly to the Henri and Belinda Termeer Center for Targeted Therapies at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston.
They raise the funds through donations and perfomances, such as an upcoming one at 2:30 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 8, with the Merrimack Valley Philharmonic Orchestra at the Timberlane Performing Arts Center in Plaistow (for tickets visit https://www.vohboston.org).
The carolers are also spending the days leading up to Christmas and Hanukkah strolling and singing at venues both indoors and outdoors, including at the Feaster Five road race in Andover this past Thursday for Thanksgiving.
Their most emotional caroling takes place each year sometime in December’s last two weeks at the Termeer Center.
Members, including Missy Padoll, also visit the center at other times in the year to see how their contributions help and offer hope to patients and their families through innovative clinical trials.
Padoll says the Termeer Center has brought 24 therapy drugs to market in the years since Voices of Hope started working with the hospital.
The group’s members are of all ages and work in various fields, from nursing to teaching to running their own businesses.
Padoll joined in 2010 and has been volunteering for cancer research ever since her mother, Natalie, died from cancer at age 64 in 1997.
Natalie sang and played piano, and Missy grew up singing American songbook musicals with her mom.
After Natalie was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer, Missy, who was living in Boston, became the primary caregiver for her mother at one point, shopping for her food, doing her laundry and talking with her doctors.
Cancer is a roller coaster, and the people who helped her mom made a huge difference to Padoll.
“I felt it was my mission to give back,” Padoll says.
Giving and receiving
Padoll found in her 40s that she absolutely loves performing and singing with Voices of Hope.
“It has been healing, visceral,” she says. “I know I can come here and know there are people who understand. And it is cathartic to sing.”
She emphasizes that Voices of Hope is a theatrical group. Yes, they sing, but not with hands clasped. They perform.
“The reason why we connect with audiences as well as we do is because we perform — we infuse energy and emotion and passion and joy into everything that we deliver,” Padoll says.
Silva said in her first years at Voices of Hope she did more performing than costume making. The last seven or eight years she has been a lead costume designer.
Still, she goes caroling with the group.
“Red scarves come out, and hats,” she says. “Some people wear antlers.”
They are always sure to involve the children in the audience, Silva says. And they have a summer youth program.
Meanwhile, at this moment in the sanctuary, the singers rehearse a rousing rendition of Gloria Estefan’s “Get on Your Feet.”
They enjoy being together, and knowing they are helping to further the cause — whether it’s raising money for cancer research or spreading joy.
On a cancer journey, there isn’t a lot of that.
So it is all about having fun. Making people smile.
“We are all in this, and we know why we are all here, and that just brings a sense of joy,” Silva says. “We really are a family, which is a very nice feeling to say and mean.”
The dozens of singers in the adjacent room sing:
“Get on your feet. Get up and make it happen.”