FILE PHOTO BY VIOREL FLORESCU/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER: Hawthorne softball coach Jackie Forte and her husband Tommy are the parents of Camden Forte, an 8-month-old child with cystic fibrosis. Camden has inspired T-shirts and the support of two area softball teams.
In his short life, Camden Forte has inspired T-shirts, a rather unfortunate hashtag and a softball team he doesn’t even know.Camden – or Cam to almost everyone – is just shy of 8 months and was born with cystic fibrosis to Jackie and Tommy Forte. In a twist of fate, both Jackie and Tommy carried the same cystic fibrosis gene and passed it down to their first-born child.
Jackie, better known as Jackie Turco during her playing days at Immaculate Heart Academy, is the head coach of the Hawthorne softball team. It hosts Rutherford today in a significant North Jersey matchup, with both teams at the top of the NJIC Colonial Division.
Rutherford took the kind step of purchasing “SuperCam” T-shirts for the upcoming Great Strides Walk next month at Van Saun County Park and plans on wearing them in warm-ups before games when they arrive.
Today, the two teams will meet. But first, they’ll likely both cuddle and play with little Cam, bonded for a good cause.
“I opened the message from [Rutherford coach] Helen [Antzoulides] saying that they wanted to do this, and my husband and I just looked at each other and were completely touched,” Jackie Forte said. “She’s been a mentor to me as one of the veteran coaches in this league, and she just said that it’s important not to just pass along softball skills to our teams, but being good people and doing good things.”
Call it a lesson in love.
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