‘‘Wittenberg Lutheran Church is doing a fund-raiser for Todd Kimball, and it has just blown up to something wonderful!’’

You must remember Todd Kimball.

He’s the guy who talked his dad, Tommy, into helping him develop Kimballs Screen Prints.

Remember when they printed all those T-shirts heralding Duke as the National Champions back in 1990? And then Duke lost?

But the T-shirts didn’t. They turned into instant collector items.

Kimballs Screen Prints is still going strong, but Todd isn’t.

He’s got cancer, and it’s come back three times in two years.

Joe Lyerly, a member of Wittenberg Lutheran, thought the church ought to raise some money to help him and his family with huge expenses.

‘‘He has insurance,’’ Gould says, ‘‘but you know how these things are – the transportation and the things insurance doesn’t cover, like his parents took him to Sloan-Kettering in New York and a hospital in the Midwest.’’

They could use help.

‘‘So he met with our pastors – Bob and Linda Voelker – of Wittenberg, and a group of us decided to call a meeting.’’

Maybe the Aid Association for Lutherans and the Lutheran Brotherhood would help, too, Lyerly suggested. The insurance and financial businesses use profits to help churches and to match fund-raisers.

So Lyerly contacted Eric and Brad Brady of AAL and Clarene Fink of Lutheran Brotherhood.

Members of Faith Lutheran heard Wittenberg was going to sell barbecued chicken to raise money for Todd and decided to be a sister church. Two churches have to be involved to get matching funds from both organizations.

And the AAL and the Brotherhood will match up to $14,000.

Gould couldn’t believe it. ‘‘Between the two groups, they’ve never gone that high.’’

Lyerly couldn’t believe it either. And he could believe it even less when Christiana jumped in, too. Then Union and St. Peter’s and Immanuel, and then all the businesses in Granite Quarry wanted to do something.

He never dreamed the desire to help Todd Kimball could be so contagious.

So plans were made for a barbecued chicken lunch and supper at Wittenberg on Friday, April 16.

To raise $14,000 and turn it into $28,000 when it’s matched, they’re going to serve takeouts for lunch from 10:30 to 3:30 and eat-in or takeout dinners from 4 to 7:30 p.m..

Wittenberg members will cook the chickens, starting in the middle of the night Thursday and cooking all day Friday to serve that many people.

But you need to make reservations. Call the church at 279-4505 by Wednesday or get a ticket – $6 each – from any Wittenberg member or from any of the other churches. Or from Granite Knitwear, McKenzie Taxidermy, Hitachi, F&M Bank, Granite Quarry School or East Rowan.

They had 4,000 tickets printed, and have distributed all but 400 so there are lots of places to get them.

Gould says it has blossomed because Todd is such a wonderful person.

‘‘He has such a good attitude. I talked to him the other day, and I said I was sorry the tumor was back, and he said, ‘No matter what happens, I’m a winner either way.’|’’

‘‘Life’s a mountain top experience,’’ his dad says, ‘‘and it’s been mountaintops and it’s been valleys. Every time you climb up those mountains, you get stronger.

‘‘Todd says it’s a card game. Everybody is dealt a hand of cards and it’s how you play your hand whether you win or lose. He’s going to win.’’

His sister, Michelle Clement, can’t believe his attitude either.

He had a terrible accident in late 1990. He was driving too fast.

‘‘And he went off the road we live on and hit a tree and was thrown from the car. He had a lot of injuries. He was in intensive care for months.’’

It took a year for him to recover.

‘‘He has changed since the accident,’’ she says. ‘‘He’s incredible. He definitely feels like what will happen is God’s will. He’s never been frustrated with what’s happened to him. He would do anything for anybody if he could.’’

He’s a Mason and involved with the Crippled Children’s Foundation and the burn centers.

But yesterday morning he was admitted to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center because of pain in his leg associated with the cancer, and their parents were with him. So Michelle, who was on spring break from her job as speech therapist in the schools, was at the shop getting an order out for him.

Doctors discovered he had a tumor in a kidney in the summer of ‘97. It was large but contained within the kidney. They removed it – and the kidney – and didn’t think it would come back.

His six-month checkup was fine.

But at the year’s check up, it was back in the same place where the kidney had been. Again it was removed. This time it was followed by immunotherapy, which he got at a cancer center in Illinois.

Six weeks later it was back again. Again it was removed. Again he went to Illinois, this time for radiation.

He got home the middle of February and a week later, felt another knot. Back again. He went to Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital in New York, but doctors said it was too large to remove. He needs to find a treatment that will shrink it. The pain started when he was in New York.

When he got home, he went to Baptist and began chemotherapy, hoping it would shrink, and the pain seemed to go away. But during the past week, it has come back.

‘‘And it’s unbearable,’’ his sister says.

‘‘They’re going to use ultrasound,’’ his dad says. ‘‘It’s a new procedure that can reduce the size of the tumor.’’

Michelle says, ‘‘The community and the church have been a godsend to my whole family,’’ doing things like planning this massive fund-raiser.

A lot like Todd himself.