♪ Always be strong ♪ - She was determined.

Determined to live.

- She was cancer free.

(upbeat music) - I feel like I was in really good hands, and I can't say enough about the treatment that I got.

- Things do change, nothing stays static.

A new day will come.

- Welcome to "Hope Is Here."

I'm Carla Hill.

A child's imagination can bring joy and laughter into a bleak world filled with challenges.

After navigating the complexities of cancer, seven year old, Kenedi Schoeneck was gifted with a song that sprang from her creativity.

A story that Kenedi pinned inspired the song "Chicken Strong."

And is a reflection of a little girl's determination to never give up or lose hope.

Mixed in, of course, with the power of a couple of chickens, who just happen to be unicorn.

(playful music) - [Kenedi] There's Penguin.

- My name's Krista Schoeneck and my lovely family, my husband Dylan, and we have two daughters, Tenley and Kenedi.

- Kenedi is extremely outgoing, very loud, and likes to be the center of attention.

Always having fun, always has a smile on her face.

And Tenley, our older daughter is extremely warm-hearted.

She's like a mother hen to Kenedi and to anybody that she meets.

(gentle music) - It started with we had a day with the slip and slide, that night her belly kind of hurt, so I took her in, and they thought maybe she just pulled a muscle or something in there.

And then about a month and a half later, she was laying on the couch and laying on her back, and you could see kind of a bulge on her right side.

Our doctor thought she would do an X-ray.

She was gone for maybe two minutes and came back in and said, "You guys have to go to Rochester, "the ER team is expecting you, "you need to get there right now."

- You know, and as a parent, when you see that up on the screen, when they put the CT scan up, at that point, you know, you're completely breaking down, and the doctor is staying super calm.

It was a stage three Wilms tumor.

It's a kidney tumor.

Stage three, because it had burst, probably that day when we were on the slip and slide and her belly hurt.

So it was attached to her kidney, and pretty much the entire right side of her in her body was tumor, so it was big.

- I just specifically remember looking at the doctors and asking, you know, "Are you staying calm "to keep us calm, "or are you staying calm because you got this," were my exact words, and she just looked me right in the eye and said, "We got this."

- [Krista] We had planned 15 rounds of chemo, it was three different medicines that she would get, kind of combination of different chemotherapies each visit, each week.

- This little girl is going through the fight of her life.

- Just seeing her through it all, you know, watching her and watching her be strong.

You know, there's times when we're scared, and so I can imagine as a six year old how scary that had to be.

- The biggest thing for me is it makes you put everything in perspective in life.

You know, you can't take anything for granted.

- After the six week scan that showed the tumor was shrinking, then they wanted to do seven rounds of radiation.

It was right after her surgery, where they removed the tumor, so it was probably the hardest week for her, 'cause radiation is hard on your body, let alone recovering from this big surgery.

So she probably lost the most hair and the most weight that week, I think.

- You know you have friends, you know you have family and everything like that, then when something like this happens, the amount of support and people reaching out is just absolutely overwhelming.

(acoustic music) - I'm Kat Perkins, I'm a singer-songwriter.

Yeah?

I think my favorite part of Sing Me A Story is that you get to see a story through a kid's eyes and whether they're talking about their sickness or just talking about how they cope, I think having a different lens to look at that through is always very special.

♪ Always be strong ♪ ♪ And never give up ♪ - Sing Me A Story is a non-profit that serves families in need to the imaginative stories of their children.

We take those stories written by kids, and it can be about anything, and we turn them into songs.

The example that Kenedi sets and how she faces hard things, and there's just a lot to learn from her and a lot to learn from this family and how they love each other.

- [Kat] Hi!

Hi, guys!

- Come on in.

- "Chicken Strong" is a song about having family and friends through the eyes of the girls who actually have chickens.

- It includes all our chickens, plus a couple extra.

- It's mostly about me, and my cancer, and my family, them helping through while doing this.

- It's so cool to be able to form a song around that story.

- [Guitar Player] One, two, three!

♪ Always be strong ♪ ♪ And never give up ♪ ♪ 'Cause we are chicken strong ♪ My goal was for them to always remember it and be able to sing along to it and have it be stuck in their heads forever and ever.

♪ 'Cause we are chicken strong ♪ ♪ This is our chicken song ♪ - Getting that no cancer report, there's absolutely no sign of tumor, they checked basically from her lungs down to her pelvic area and everything is fantastic.

- [Dylan] She was cancer free.

(bell rings) (group applauding) - You feel the weight lifting off your shoulders, and you can smile, and you can be happy, and feel safe.

- She was able to survive cancer and that she had a smile on her face through the entire thing.

- Right until the end, she never lost that spunk or anything, she just was Kenedi.

♪ And we're strong ♪ Here we go!

♪ Always be strong ♪ ♪ And never give up ♪ ♪ 'Cause we are chicken strong ♪ ♪ This is our chicken song ♪ (family applauding) - That's so good!

- Just to capture that beautiful song is great.

- I love it!

It's the perfect song.

- [Kat] Woo!

- We might never go to bed.

- [Kat] That's perfect.

- I definitely wanna hear more of that song and we will later on.

But right now, we have the Schoenecks here, Kenedi, her sister Tenley, and Mom and Dad, Krista and Dylan.

Welcome to "Hope Is Here."

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Oh, it's certainly our pleasure.

Mom and Dad, certainly the diagnosis of childhood cancer was quite a shock.

How did you process the news?

- Well, it's something that you would, obviously, never expect to happen to you or to your family, especially a child.

And it was definitely a complete shock.

But then you pretty much just go right into parent mode after that, where you're just trying to do everything possible to make sure that your child's gonna be okay.

- My goodness.

And Kenedi, I want to come to you.

I just loved watching your story.

You're such a happy little girl, and you know, when you heard you were sick, what got you through the day?

- My family, my sister playing with me mostly all the time, and all the help by my friends by telling me, "You got this," and that's it.

- Having that support system is so important.

So we're going to get into the power of music, we mentioned that chicken song in a minute.

But Mom and Dad, I'd like to hear your thoughts for families who are grappling with the challenges of childhood cancer.

What's your advice to the families looking today at our show?

- I think one of the main things that stuck out to us was our infusion nurse said to us the first day we were there, you know, her first trip getting chemotherapy, getting her port access, there's a lot going on, and he just said, "Take it day by day, "don't predict what could happen, "what you don't know in the future, "and just be in the moment, help your daughter, "and that will in turn help you get through it."

And that's really what we stuck to, and every week we had to be in Rochester, sometimes twice a week, and we just said, we're gonna get to all our appointments, and we're gonna get through it.

- Another thing too that we definitely took advantage of, that we didn't think we needed was the support of friends, family, and basically our whole town that was pulling for us and pulling for Kenedi.

That's definitely something that I would advise, you need to lean on that support structure.

You need it more than you ever thought you did in the past.

And you know, you're passing people coming up to you and saying, anything you need, anything you need, anything you need, you know, just like when anybody goes through an issue, but in this particular case, that was huge for us and our family to get through everything to know that everybody had our back.

- Thank you so much for sharing that.

You're right.

But you know, I wanna get back to this song.

Tenley, how did you all come up with this chicken song?

Please, tell me how these chickens eventually turn into unicorns.

But what made you dig into your creativity?

- I think where the chickens mainly came in, was because we had chickens, and we had recently got chickens, so we kind of wanted to add that part of our life in there.

And then the unicorns was Kenedi's idea.

She still does, but she really likes unicorns and pink and that magical type thing, so we wanted to add that in there.

- So you have chickens.

I'm a city girl, where do you have these chickens?

- We have them in our backyard.

We built a coop up against our shed.

- So do you like live on a farm?

And are these chickens like your pets?

Do you have names?

Do you have a favorite one?

- We do have names.

My favorite one is Penguin.

Our original Penguin was a darker chicken, but we got new ones, so now it's a white chicken.

- So Kenedi, tell me your thoughts.

Tell me your thoughts on your chickens and particularly the unicorn part.

- My thoughts on the chickens is because we have chickens and I thought that would be a little fun thing to do.

And the reason why I did unicorns is because I really like unicorns, and that's like my favorite thing ever, so I thought we could just do chickens.

- Well, I love the fact that you've used creativity to bring hope in your situation, and that's what we love speaking about here at "Hope Is Here."

You know, I want to bring in Austin Atteberry who is the executive director and founder of Sing Me A Story.

Also here with us is the talented singer and songwriter, Kat Perkins.

Many of you will know her from the hit show, "The Voice."

It's so good to have you both on "Hope Is Here."

Welcome.

- Thanks for having me.

- Thank you so much.

- Absolutely.

I wanna start with you, Austin.

Your organization made this happen.

Putting Kenedi together with Kat.

How does your organization work for those that aren't familiar?

- Sure.

Well, thank you for having us.

We are Sing Me A Story.

We give deserving kids in need all over the world the chance to write and illustrate stories about whatever they want, and then we give those to songwriters who turn them into songs and send them back to the kids.

So when we're fortunate enough, we're able to team up with wonderful organizations like the ASCO Foundation, Conquer Cancer, to create projects like this, where we work with wonderful families, like the Schoenecks, and their creative daughters to write stories about whatever they want, and then we give those to talented songwriters like the wonderful Kat Perkins to turn into songs and send back to the kids.

- That's fantastic.

If you don't mind, what prompted you to start this mission of giving children this wonderful gift to use their creativity in this way?

- Sure.

Well, I'm a songwriter.

I'm from Chicago, I went to Northwestern University there and then I moved down to Nashville, Tennessee after school and a pretty girl moved in next door to me, and she happened to work at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital as a child life specialist, and she encouraged me to volunteer there as a music volunteer.

So full disclosure, to impress the cute girl that moved in next door, I said, absolutely.

But I had to figure out something to do with these kids.

So I started by just asking them to tell me a story about whatever they wanted, and we would turn that into a song, and then I would go home and record the song on my computer, and then send the MP3 back to the children's hospital for the kids and their families.

So we wanted to bring that opportunity to other songwriters and to other kids, and so we put the whole process online, and by putting the process online, we were able to reach other songwriters and other kids.

So today we have about 5,000 songwriters that participate in our program.

We work with a little over 200 organizations serving kids in need all over the world, and we've been on "The Today Show," and "People Magazine" and various things like that.

And the pretty girl that moved in next door to me is now my wife Sarah, and we have three little babies.

- I was wondering.

I was hoping there was a wonderful fairy tale ending.

That's fantastic.

Thank you so much for sharing that.

What a wonderful story.

I wanna bring in Kat.

So Kat, you received a story that Kenedi wrote about chickens.

Now where do you go from there?

- Well, you know, in this case, when I got the story and I got the pictures, I related to the chickens just because I feel like the chickens are their best friends.

I have a plethora of best friends that are just like those chickens to those girls.

So to me, it was just more like this connection they had to an animal, to a thing, to whatever it was, to get through a very hard time.

I laughed, I'm not gonna lie, I laughed, and I knew that this was gonna be one of my favorite songs that I've ever created.

Who doesn't want to write about chickens?

I gladly accepted the challenge, and my whole goal was to write something that the girls would remember, and I wanted it to be catchy, and just super fun because of their personalities.

- Well, indeed, you did your job.

You did your job.

And truly, were you able to not get it out of your head, as Kat was saying?

- Yes, the kids played it at school.

The whole school played it, it was during their homecoming week.

And I got so many emails from teachers saying, "All I can hear is 'Chicken Strong' "up and down the hallway."

- Well, congratulations on that.

That is quite a feat.

Let me introduce you to the CEO of an amazing organization called Conquer Cancer.

Please welcome Nancy Daly.

Nancy, tell me how Conquer Cancer and the ASCO Foundation is involved with Kenedi's story and her song, and why was this creative project important to your foundation?

- Yeah, well, thank you, Carla, for asking.

It was really important, because Kenedi's doctor, Dr. Rhodes was actually a young investigator that we funded back in 2013.

And so it was actually Dr. Rhodes that brought us Kenedi and her story.

So we were really excited that we were able to do that, and that's how we met Kenedi.

- Oh, wow.

So how did the foundation come upon the Schoeneck family and what did you have in mind in terms of how you wanted to help her?

- Well, you know, when we heard the story, and as I said, what is so important to us is being able to support research that can help patients like Kenedi through their treatment.

Childhood cancer in particular, you know, starting in the '60s, where the recognize that there really needed to be an effort to put young children on clinical trials and really have the research be run through protocol work.

And back then it was about a 20% five year survival rate, and over the years, because of that effort with the clinical trials and people like Dr. Rhodes, anywhere between 85 to 90% of children have a five year or better survival rate.

So you can see that we wanted to be there for the family and supporting the ability to get that research done so that Kenedi could enjoy the treatment that's going to be able to have her have a long life.

- Thank you so much for sharing that.

Austin, I wanna come back to you.

Tell me about the power of music.

Have you witnessed its healing power in other situations, other patients?

Share that with our audience.

- Yeah, absolutely.

You know, the big thing for us is we feel that the greatest gift in the world is the gift of giving.

And if we can give the children that we serve the opportunity to give the one thing they all have, regardless of circumstance, which is their imaginations and their hearts and their creativity, if we can give them the chance to give that, and then take that and create something like a song that has the ability to transcend borders and stigmas and all those things, to ultimately, hopefully reminds us all that we have far more in common as people, as human beings than we do that makes us different.

So that's kind of our overarching mission and the combination of the imaginations of kiddos like Kenedi and Tenley, combined with the talents of songwriters like Kat to create a piece of music that can reach us all, has the ability to remind us that we have far more in common than we often attribute to ourselves.

- Kat, I wanna come to you.

You know, we just heard music is a bridge, and certainly you have been able to touch so many people through your music writing, through your exposure through "The Voice."

Tell us about the process of having created such serious songs to helping the girls with, certainly this is a serious message, but this really fun, silly, but hopeful song.

What was that songwriting path like for you?

- You know, I think we as songwriters always get to say that we get to write down and create something that makes people feel.

So when you're taking words, whether that's sad, or fun, or happy, or about chickens, the goal is the same.

And it is just as hard or easy as you want it to be.

But what we get to do is turn those words into something people can feel.

So it's kind of the same essence with whatever you're talking about, but in this case, I think we really took the girls' personalities along with the words and got to bridge that gap between what they wanted to say and how they could say it with song and how I could help them do that.

- What is the biggest gratification you get from these projects?

- I think one of the biggest gratifications is watching the joy on the child's faces.

And in this case, we got to sing together in the family home, we got to have fun, we got to spend the day together.

I got to meet the chickens, (Carla laughs) which was absolutely beyond something I ever thought I would get to do.

But it's the joy in the faces of those kids that are writing something very meaningful and they get to hear it being put to a melody.

- Mom and Dad, what a journey your family's been through.

What have you learned about this cancer journey?

You know, the diagnosis is not something you'd wish on anyone, but you know, as a cancer survivor myself, I look at life through a different lens.

What is your message to families out there?

- You definitely, like you said, look at it through a different lens.

You know, we obviously felt fortunate already for the family that we have, but then it brought everybody even closer, that she went through this and Austin had said too, you know, you're not on an island.

And it just brings everybody together.

- To add to that, but I think we just really followed the girls.

Like, as adults you tend to dwell on the bad and you project bad into the future and other areas.

And like Kenedi, leaving her chemotherapy treatments and just like bouncing down the hallway of the hospital, wanting to go to McDonald's.

We couldn't be the sad people, 'cause we had to follow her happiness.

So just find a happiness and stick with it.

- So if there's another young person watching this show right now, what message do you have for them, Kenedi?

What advice would you give them to keep their hopes strong?

- To always stay strong and never give up.

- Tenley, let's talk about how you've been supportive of your sister.

What message do you have for others who might have a sibling that's going through childhood cancer?

What would you say to them, Tenley?

- In the beginning, when you first hear about it, try not to freak out too much, especially if that little sibling, or even older sibling's in the room, and just for your sake, if you don't freak out as much, and not really try and forget about it, but try and occupy yourself, so you're not always freaked out about it.

And always tell yourself that they're gonna get through it.

- And I'll ask you the same question, what's the moral of the story, considering that you're now a co-songwriter, you have songwriting credit, what's the moral of the story of life and the need for hope?

What would you say to our audience?

- Obviously, like Kenedi said, always be strong and never give up, but also always have hope and try to not have negative thoughts during it, because if you have negative thoughts then that's going to impact everyone else around you.

So always try and stay positive, try and stick with hope.

- What wonderful advice.

Thank you so much.

You know, we have just witnessed the healing power of music mixed in with the love of a wonderful family and the generosity of a very few special organizations and foundations who believe in hope.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- And now, for Kenedi's song, "Chicken Strong."

♪ Always be strong ♪ ♪ And never give up ♪ ♪ 'Cause we are chicken strong ♪ ♪ Always be strong ♪ ♪ And never give up ♪ ♪ 'Cause we are chicken strong ♪ ♪ This is our chicken song ♪ ♪ Once upon a time, there were these chickens ♪ ♪ They only answered by their given names ♪ ♪ One of the chicks, her name was Penguin ♪ ♪ Her best friend's sister went by Chicken Wing ♪ ♪ They live a small town life in Chicken Creek ♪ ♪ They love to play outside or hide and seek ♪ ♪ One had a blue horn and the other had pink ♪ ♪ They were a family so kind and sweet ♪ ♪ Then one day, it happened so fast ♪ ♪ Mom and Dad heard a great big crash ♪ ♪ They came around and in a real fast dash ♪ ♪ But Momma Caramel said, don't worry ♪ ♪ Always be strong ♪ ♪ And never give up ♪ ♪ 'Cause we are chicken strong ♪ ♪ Always be strong ♪ ♪ And never give up ♪ ♪ 'Cause we are chicken strong ♪ ♪ This is our chicken song ♪ ♪ It turned out that Penguin broke her arm ♪ ♪ She had to go away for stitches ♪ ♪ But Dr. Josh, he was a cheetah boss ♪ ♪ He had the medicine to fix it ♪ ♪ They missed her every day while she was gone ♪ ♪ They had so many friends to visit ♪ ♪ Their feathered friends ♪ ♪ Were White Out, Sharon, and Pringle ♪