Those bright yellow dispensers at U.P. parks and beaches are free for anyone, and the story behind them is one of love and loss
Spend any time at a U.P. park, beach, or ball field lately and you may have spotted bright yellow dispensers that look like they belong by a sink. They are not soap. They are free sunscreen, and there are now more than 100 of them across the U.P. Behind every one is a story about a mother and a daughter.
The organization behind them is a U.P. nonprofit called Just Believe, and it started with heartbreak. In 2011, a woman named Jodi Ball was diagnosed with stage four melanoma. She fought it hard, but she died two years later, in 2013, at just 38 years old, leaving behind a husband and two children.
Before she died, Jodi told her mother, Delight Hill, what she wanted. She wanted the word spread about skin cancer, especially to young people, so that other families might be spared what theirs went through. Her family and friends around Negaunee and Gwinn formed Just Believe that same year to carry it out. Hill, a former teacher, chairs the organization and has become its public face.
It started small, in Marquette County in 2016, and grew county by county. The money comes from the Superior Health Foundation, community foundations, and rotary, exchange and Kiwanis clubs; the dispensers themselves come from Impact Melanoma, which puts out six to seven hundred a year nationally. A setup runs about $300. Today those bright yellow dispensers are at parks, beaches, trails and ball fields all over the U.P., free for anyone to use, and they have spread to the Lower Peninsula as far as Harbor Springs and Kalamazoo.
Just Believe now takes sun safety into every kindergarten, sixth grade and high school health class in Marquette County, and Hill’s message in them is not complicated. Use sunscreen, reapply it every two hours because of UV radiation, and stay out of tanning beds. Watch your moles too. Dr. Heather Buchholz, a dermatologist quoted alongside Hill by WLUC this June, runs through the standard ABCDE check: asymmetry, an irregular or scalloped border, a color that is not an even medium brown, a diameter bigger than a pencil eraser, and any mole that is evolving in size, shape, color or symptoms.
It is a strikingly U.P. kind of thing. One grieving mother, a lot of grit, and a whole peninsula looking out for each other one squirt of sunscreen at a time. It is the same quiet, take-care-of-your-own spirit behind efforts like free flights for local kids, and you see it everywhere up here. More than a hundred small yellow boxes, scattered from the parks of Marquette to ball fields out in the country, all of them quietly carrying one young woman’s wish to keep other families whole.
So the next time you are out enjoying a U.P. summer and you spot one of those yellow dispensers, use it. It is free, it works, and it is there for a reason. And maybe take a second to remember the name behind it: Just Believe, for Jodi, from a mom who turned the worst kind of loss into something that protects the rest of us.
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Sources, credits, and reporting details
Sources & accountability
How this story was reported
Editorial methodAggregation
Last verifiedAug. 27, 2026
Corrections statusNo material correction note is recorded on this article.
AI assistanceResearched and drafted with AI tools. Reviewed and approved by editor Keegan O’Brien.
Verification note: Three corrections made to the body on 2026-08-27 before this ledger was written. (1) The draft said Delight Hill founded Just Believe. A Healthier Michigan says the organisation was formed by Jodi Ball's family and friends in the Negaunee and Gwinn communities, and describes Hill as a trustee and chair of its awareness committee; WLUC calls her chair. Crediting one woman with what a community did is the kind of error the people involved would recognise immediately, so the copy now says the family and friends formed it and Hill chairs it and is its public face. The headline was rebuilt on the same point: it led with the mother and now leads with Jodi's request. (2) 'In 2016, the first two dispensers went up along a trail near Negaunee, paid for with a grant' is confirmed by no source consulted; only the year and Marquette County are supported. It was replaced with the funding and supply detail that is sourced. (3) 'Delight, who still installs the dispensers herself' is unverified and was cut; her classroom work is documented and stays. UNVERIFIED AND REMOVED: the SPF 30 recommendation, which neither cited outlet attributes to Hill. The reapply-every-two-hours line is her own words to WLUC and stays in quotation-free but attributed form. SENSITIVITY: kept routine, but note this piece touches skin cancer prevention, and post 1447 was retired on 2026-07-12 for health copy that could read as prevention advice. The guidance here is attributed throughout, to Hill and to a named dermatologist, and the article makes no claim in the site's own voice. Keep it that way. NAMED PEOPLE: Jodi Ball is deceased and her mother, husband and children are living and local. Every detail about them here comes from published interviews the family gave.
Primary sources
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UP organization fights skin cancer through sunscreen dispensers — WLUC Upper Michigan's Source
Published Jun. 12, 2026. Accessed Aug. 27, 2026.
The most recent source and the only one that carries the current dispenser count. Dated ten weeks before this draft was corrected.
Additional reporting
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Sunscreen Dispensers: Healthy Trend Spreading Through Michigan's U.P. — A Healthier Michigan, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan
Accessed Aug. 27, 2026.
The correcting source. It is the one that shows the organisation was formed by a group rather than by one person, which is the error this pass fixed.
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Just Believe distributes sunscreen dispensers — The Mining Journal
Published May. 1, 2017. Accessed Aug. 27, 2026.
Cited in the draft's original source line and kept. The 2017 date is why it cannot support the current count, which comes from WLUC instead.
Photo and media credits
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Summer Day at Hurricane River Beach (ac67963c-a752-4469-bbff-54ab2bae6bce).JPG (featured image) — National Park Service, via Wikimedia Commons
Featured image record. Accessed Sep. 10, 2026. Public domain.
Photographed 2018-07-30. Resized for the site.
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Sunscreen on back under normal and UV light.jpg — Wikimedia Commons (Andrew Steele)
Accessed Sep. 10, 2026. CC0.
In-body photo: SPF 30 sunscreen photographed in normal light and under UV. Replaced a stock image on Sept 10, 2026.
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Gfp-michigan-mclain-state-park-shore-at-mclain.jpg — Wikimedia Commons (Yinan Chen)
Accessed Sep. 10, 2026. Public domain.
In-body photo: the Lake Superior shore at McLain State Park. Replaced a stock image on Sept 10, 2026.
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