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It was once said of Walt Disney that “when he believes a thing, he believes it all over, implicitly and unquestioningly.” For the last 10 years, that thing for Jay Towers, is using his platform as a morning TV and radio host to take chronically or terminally ill children to Disney World through the Jay’s Juniors program.

“I get to be on the radio every day, and I get to be on TV every day,” says Towers, who is the host of on 100.3 WNIC, an iHeartRadio station, and a co-anchor on . “If I can use that to especially help kids that without this trip would probably not get a chance to go to Disney World — that’s the win for me. I mean, it’s the greatest thing ever.”

The Jay’s Juniors program, which Towers runs alongside his radio co-hosts, Chelsea Kivell and Allyson Martinek, began in 2014 to address the numerous calls and letters Towers received from families with sick children requesting help during the holidays.

Each fall, about 25 families are selected and gifted with an all-expenses-paid five-day, four-night trip to meet Mickey Mouse and his friends in Orlando, Florida. In early December, the families all travel together — with Jay Towers in the Morning hosts — and listeners can feel like a part of the magic by listening to live broadcasts from Orlando every morning.

Families are given access to all the parks, spending money for souvenirs, a photo pass, and more. Nurses are also brought on the trip to assess medical situations and determine if a participant needs to see or talk to a doctor or go to the hospital.

Last year, Jay’s Juniors raised almost $600,000 — collected from sponsors, such as Kroger, Planet Fitness, and Emagine Entertainment — to fund the trips. It was at the 2023 welcome party for families at Emagine Royal Oak that ����vlog��׿�� Detroit got to meet a few of the participants, like Christina Kurzatkowski and her 15-year-old son, Skyler Pfromm.

Pfromm was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which means the left side of his heart is severely underdeveloped, and he has had four open-heart surgeries, the first at just 10 days old. At the start of October 2023, during a three-week hospitalization at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, a Jay’s Juniors ad popped up on TV, and Pfromm asked his mother to apply. “It’s not something I ever thought to do in the past,” Kurzatkowski says. A few weeks later, the iHeartRadio hosts called and let them know they were going to Disney World.

Although Pfromm wasn’t able to fulfill his wish of meeting Baby Yoda, Towers discovered the teen’s love of everything Halloween and helped him send a video message to actor James Jude Courtney, who played Michael Myers in the most recent Halloween franchise. While at Epcot, Pfromm got a video message back of Courtney saying hello with the Michael Myers mask on. “It was pretty cool,” Pfromm says. A few months later, on May 4, Pfromm met Courtney in person at Towers’s “Halfway 2 Halloween” event.

Kurzatkowski was happy her daughter and husband were also able to enjoy the trip. “It’s something that we would have never been able to do to the extent that we did it,” Kurzatkowski says. “To stay at the Polynesian [Resort], to stay four days, … having the ability to just say, ‘Yes, you can get that.’ … It was just something that we’ll never be able to do again, and we’re so grateful to have had the opportunity.

For more information about the Jay’s Juniors Disney World trip — including how to nominate a family for next year’s trip — visit .

This story originally appeared in the November 2024 issue of ����vlog��׿��. To read more, pick up a copy of ����vlog��׿�� Detroit at a local retail outlet. Our will be available on Nov. 6.