Grégory Ellis is a busy eighth grader from Raleigh, NC. He is pictured here with his dog, Kiwi.

He not only is a straight A student, he also plays soccer on his local team and this past summer he had a very exciting role in an upcoming movie.  We have included a couple of pictures from the set below.  Thank you so much to the Ellis family for allowing us this preview.

 

The most exciting news however, is how Grégory has expanded his role from last year in helping JDRF. This year he is a Junior Ambassador for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), and he was invited to be the Guest Speaker at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel on August 29th at the kick-off  luncheon for this year's JDRF "Walk For The Cure".  He gave his speech to share awareness about  Type 1 Diabetes and to show why it is important to find a cure for this devastating disease which afflicts millions of people who must deal with every single day.

Grégory was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes while on tour with Clay Aiken in December 2005. He shared how this disease has changed his life, how he copes with it and how he manages to still do everything he used to do but with so much more hassle. To quote from his speech:  "I hope I can still use my feet to play soccer and tennis and I hope I will still see and be able to read my lines. I hope for these things, so I carry on doing the things I love".

In his speech at the Sheraton Imperial, he encouraged the crowd of 350 corporate and family team captains, to join him and others for the walk, which will be held on October 27th, 2007, at the Nortel Campus in Raleigh Triangle Park. The walk starts at 10:30 a.m.

If you wish to support Grégory in his effort to raise $10.000 dollars this year for the JDRF, or if you wish to join his Walk Team, please go on line at  www.walk.jdrf.org and search for "Gregory's Gang" , or use the link on the right, it goes directly to his page.  Thank you for your interest in Grégory and his cause.

We just learned the Raleigh paper also thinks Grégory deserves a gold star. This is the article they had in their recent paper. Congratulations!

We will always remember him for stealing our hearts while playing alongside Clay in the Joyful Noise Tour. Grégory has been acting and singing in local theater since he was quite young. Besides being an excellent actor and singer, Grégory is completely bilingual. He speaks, writes and reads in both English and French.

Grégory and his mom have both been wonderful helping us with interviews for the site. Grégory answered questions for us while the tour was going on and he also did a follow up interview with us about what life was like during the tour.

My children made up the questions for the first interview. The second round of questions was made up from a combination of more questions from my children and some questions sent to us through emails. We thank him and his mother for allowing us this opportunity. We also have set up a photo album with some of our favorite pictures of Grégory. If you have pictures you would like to contribute, please email me at clayaikenkids@gmail.com and I will add them.