Barb Higgins first spotted a billboard with her face on it in July when she and her husband Ken, daughter Gracie, and 1-year-old son Jack drove home from Florida to Concord in Manhattan. I was driving through Midtown. Higgins said they turned on their hazard lights and stopped to take pictures of the sign that occupied half of the side of her 23-story Eighth Avenue office.
“We turned left onto Eighth Avenue and were like, ‘There you are!'” recalls Higgins. “It was a huge building. And Jack said, ‘Mama!’ I can see the building. ”
When the police came to ask them to move the car, he recognized her from the photograph.
The ad depicts Higgins standing on a mountaintop in a desert landscape with baby Jack in a carrier on his back.
“I beat out three brain tumors. At 57 I gave birth again,” the ad reads. “Every day is a day to get up.”
Concord School Board member Barb Higgins has appeared life-size on New York City buildings over the past few months as part of an advertising campaign for the Montefiore Medical Center.
For Higgins, participating in advertising campaigns was both a way to support the hospitals that helped her and a way to share her personal story of tragedy and hope with the world. passed away. Her daughter Molly died suddenly of a brain tumor of unknown cause. In 2018, when she started thinking about having another baby, Higgins went to Montefiore Medical Center to seek solutions for her painful chronic neurological condition. Her doctor ordered her MRI and discovered that Higgins had three brain tumors of her own. She underwent surgery and radiotherapy at Montefiore and recovered from both the tumor and the neurological condition.
“They were really, really nice to me,” Higgins said. “They treated us in a way I’ve never been treated by a medical professional. It was such an honor for me to do that.”
In 2021, after completing a cycle of IVF treatment that was missed at Montefiore, Higgins successfully gave birth to her third child, Jack, at age 57, making her the oldest person to give birth in New Hampshire.
“To me, this ad and all it means is just knowing that no matter how bad your day is, tomorrow is going to be a better day,” Higgins said. It’s just talking about being sad and creating a life and finding happiness again.”
The advertising campaign consists of video commercials, articles on Montefiore’s website, and billboard ads posted around New York.
In April, Montefiore flew Higgins and her family to Moab, Utah to shoot commercials twice in March and April. The Office, 30 Rock When Dawson’s CreekHiggins said that when the crew first took her to the location, it was midnight and it was still dark outside. As the sun rose, Higgins found himself sitting on a cliff overlooking a beautiful canyon.
“They said, ‘It’s okay to think about Molly, think about anything, whatever emotion you have on your face,'” Higgins said. A lot of my facial expressions were easy to come by because I didn’t have one, and I was just like, ‘Oh my god, we’re in the middle of a canyon. ”
This isn’t the first time she’s appeared in an ad for a medical center. In 2019, after she was cured of a brain tumor, the company came to Concord to photograph her at Capitol Her Center Her Forge Her Arts and film her working out in her gym. .
While she’s received some critical comments from people online about her choice to have a baby later in life, Higgins said she’s gotten an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from people across the country. She said people who knew her from TV commercials approached her on the street. I share stories of my travels.
Higgins said it feels good to be able to share her story with the world, especially since we can talk about Molly.
“You can’t tell Jack’s story without telling Molly’s story, so her legacy and what she stood for is also shared as part of the story,” Higgins said. Maybe not, but let’s just say her energy is on Billboard.”
