Andrea Cartwright designed her senior project to honor family who battled cancer.

“I got inspired because my grandma was diagnosed with breast cancer,” said Cartwright, a senior at Pine Eagle High School in Halfway.

She decided to build a rocking chair, by hand, and then raffle it to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

But she needed help to tackle a project of this scale.

“I’d done a little woodworking before,” she said.

Her help came from David Baker, a driving instructor at the school.

“He volunteered to help me build a rocking chair,” Cartwright said.

They built it over four Saturdays from February to March, using spalted yellow pine. The chair was on display at Ryder Bros. in Baker City for several weeks.

Raffle tickets are $2 each, or five tickets for $8.

Information is posted at Ryder Bros., and tickets can be purchased by calling Cartwright at 541-540-4924.

Cartwright chose St. Jude as the beneficiary after a bit of research on the children’s hospital.

“There’s a lot of new things they’ve discovered,” she said. “There are so many new developments.”

She did contact St. Jude to tell them about her project.

“They’ve been really supportive,” she said.

The winning raffle ticket will be drawn Dec. 15.

About St. Jude

St. Jude was established in 1962 in Memphis, Tennessee, with the mission of treating children “regardless of race, color, creed or their family’s ability to pay.”

To learn more about the hospital and its research milestones, visit stjude.org.