Support for LateToSchool

latetoschool · April 18, 2008, 5:39pm

Binx, I am actually a bit of a ditz under normal circumstances - I’m the one who comes out of the restroom trailing the toilet paper on the heels, etc. This actually happened to me this week, and it’s especially entertaining because I could only go to the bathroom under escort do to the classified environment, so imagine the escort officer says “ma’am…” lololol. And I have more than once worn two different shoes to work…this sort of stuff happens to me too often unfortunately. Oh well… :)

I am getting into my email next; I look forward to seeing the photographs…I am glad to not be in them however, considering that I now look like a rather unfortunate pig, from the swelling…

Long ago, before I was diagnosed, my daughter asked me to write my life story. I have never done so because I didn’t want her to be spooked, but I always said that someday I would.

The very abridged version is that I lost both parents very young, became a ward of the state, left on my own, had warrants out for my arrest, and spent considerable time in juvenile detention. Once past age 17 I managed to find ways to work, and to stay out of jail. When my daughter was born, I ended up homeless - we lived in a car for a few weeks, then a shelter. I ended up junking the car for $200-ish and using it to buy a one way plane ticket for us.

I have always been absolutely certain - always - then and now - that education is the path out of poverty and desperation. I have a very, very clear image that I will never, ever forget of my then six year old daughter collapsed at the open refrigerator door, sobbing as if her heart would break: she was hungry and there was no food. I could afford the tuition for her school - (the very best school I could find and the one that I specifically chose because I believed it gave her the very best pathway towards college), and the rent, and the light bill (well most of the time anyway), but getting food in the house too - that was hard. It was always a matter of plate spinning and trying to cover all of the bills, but, tuition had to be paid first, period.

But we made it through. I worked very hard, and for many, many long hours, and I was very opportunistic and aggressive with career decisions.

Today I own real estate with enough land to grow all the food I can eat; I own stock in the best biotech companies, and my now 20-something daughter is a college graduate of a simply wonderful, magical university and holder of two degrees and four minors, and she has a very, very enviable CV.

If I have a message that may help someone either active or lurking, it’s that I strongly believe that very hard work, sustained over time will yield positive results: you can achieve anything you want to achieve, if you are willing to consistently do the work and commit the resouces required to get there. (It probably also helps to have some divine intervention along the way, and some ethics and integrity.) With hard work and determination, you can actually raise a child, and navigate them from a homeless position to the front doors of Harvard. (They’ll likely be rejected like the other 93%, but, they’ll have a wonderful education and beautiful life experiences at some simply incredible college just the same.)

If you think about it, this isn’t really very different than other sorts of stories of persons who have overcome adversity. But if one wants to translate the experience path into fighting a terrible cancer, I think it still comes down to force of will, and perhaps, again, divine intervention.

I also think - if one is attempting something very, very difficult, it helps to break up the tasks in smaller pieces. For example, in finding food to eat and to feed one’s daughter while living in a car, it helps to focus on just where to legally and safely locate the next meal: trying to decide the next month’s menu does not work in such a situation, obviously. Today, I find that to get to a high-level meeting, it helps to focus just on accomplishing the very smallest steps, one by one: walk carefully, to the shower, turn it on, test the water, step, in, you’re o.k., you didn’t fall, nothing hurts, you didn’t faint, you’re still standing, now reach for the soap…you’re still o.k., you can get through this, you’re going to feel better in a sec …one small step at a time. (Next thing you know you’re speaking in front of hundreds of people and they’re actually interested in what you have to say - or you’re planting your garden - or the child is off to college - or she’s graduating…etc…).

I hope this is of some help to someone…

epistrophy · April 18, 2008, 5:56pm

As Lao Tzu put it (in another language, of course): A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

[Amazon.com:</a> Tao Te Ching, 25th-Anniversary Edition: Lao Tsu,Gia-Fu Feng,Jane English: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679776192/ref=pd_cp_b_1?pf_rd_p=317711001&pf_rd_s=center-41&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0061142662&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0F5AD4CJ7TXYAGKN27AH]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679776192/ref=pd_cp_b_1?pf_rd_p=317711001&pf_rd_s=center-41&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0061142662&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0F5AD4CJ7TXYAGKN27AH)

[Amazon.com:</a> Tao Te Ching: A New English Version (Perennial Classics): Lao Tzu,Stephen Mitchell: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-Perennial-Classics/dp/0061142662/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208555849&sr=1-1]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-Perennial-Classics/dp/0061142662/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208555849&sr=1-1)

lorelei2702 · April 18, 2008, 6:12pm

You are an American Ideal (if they only knew, you would be the Idol) and representative of the best of human courage and determination. We are blessed to know (of) you and to share a small part of your journey. Many of us have challenges, but you claim no excuses and have taken no byes. Thank you.

NYMomof2 · April 18, 2008, 9:30pm

LTS, I was hanging on every word of your post, and it left me dying to read the unabridged version! For example, I’m wondering what your very early life was like, before you lost your parents. I’m guessing that it was happy and secure, and gave you the extraordinary strength of character that made it possible for you to overcome those enormous obstacles, and achieve so much.

mythmom · April 18, 2008, 9:58pm

Thank you latetoschool. Your post was wonderful. And yes, the only way. Keep on keeping on.

But not everyone achieves your spectacular success.

Now for the dolls!

latetoschool · April 18, 2008, 10:29pm

NYMomof2, I am not sure what to think of my early life. From an economic perspective, it was secure. I am grateful for my parents and the little time I did have with them but I have also wondered how conflict resolution would have played out over time, and in some ways feel I may have dodged a serious bullet: from a personal development perspective, I would have had a problem with going to college just to collect an Mrs., which was
the only reason my mother thought girls should ever go to college. In school, I could never please either parent: I actually got into trouble for bringing home straight A report cards, but with poor marks in “conduct” - I got a “3”, which was the worst - “1” was good; “2” was fair. I was told that it was o.k. to bring home C’s, or even lower, but, “conduct” had to be perfect. (I ingored this and still racked up the A’s and still got into trouble at school and got bad grades in conduct. I didn’t even try to score well in conduct - I was constantly in trouble all the time and it wouldn’t have worked. Oh well.) She also didn’t believe that caucasians should associate with “colored people”, and, my father did nothing to mitigate this message. That and other issues would have caused significant problems for me later.

But today, I am also not so quick to accept that I am too different from most people and I am not at all sure that anything I have done is meritorious of any compliments - for example, the schema of achievement the way I have executed it and even as Epistrophy’s latest contribution illustrates - these concepts are not new. Hard work usually does pay off; sheer force of will usually does accomplish more than mediocre commitment; long journeys must start somewhere and they are far more manageable one step at a time. Often, too, I think catastrophic loss motivates one to achieve more, faster; and I can stone cold guarantee that the sight of one’s hungry child sobbing at the door of an empty refrigerator is the ultimate sustaining motivator - unless something is terribly amiss psychologically with the parent.

Hopefully some of this translates to defeating this cowardly disease. Hopefully, too, some of the information exchanged here is helpful to others, either in fighting a serious illness or perhaps overcoming other challenges.

mimk6 · April 18, 2008, 10:48pm

“Often, too, I think catastrophic loss motivates one to achieve more, faster;”

Very true. The evidence indicates that girls who lose their mothers at a young age are disproportionately represented in prison and also disproportionately represented as high achievers. In other words, there is less middle ground for these girls and many of them do achieve more, faster.

epistrophy · April 18, 2008, 10:55pm

and another

**"Lung cancer deadlier than breast cancer for women

Gains in early diagnosis coupled with new treatments are spurring hopes for increased survival rates in lung cancer patients."**

Lung cancer has had the dubious and little-known distinction of being the leading cancer killer of U.S. women since 1987. Many people mistakenly continue to rank breast cancer as claiming the most lives because it is the most common cancer among the nation’s women.

However, this misconception is a case of deadly confusion.

Lung cancer will be responsible for 25% of women’s cancer deaths this year, while breast cancer will account for 15%, according to American Cancer Society estimates. Survival rates for breast cancer have also surged far beyond those for lung cancer.

While five-year survival rates for lung cancer are now 15% – only slightly better than the 12% survival rates of 30 years ago – survival rates for breast cancer have reached 88%.

“Women in the United States have the highest rate of lung cancer in the world, and they don’t even know it,” said Sheila Ross, Washington representative of the Alliance for Lung Cancer Advocacy, Support and Education and a lung cancer survivor. She was speaking at a Nov. 13 Capitol Hill briefing.

Researchers at the event also noted that while rates of lung cancer have been declining among men for many years, women’s rates have increased until very recently, when they began to level off.

In addition, compared with men, women who smoke are more likely to develop lung cancer at a younger age and as a result of being exposed to lower levels of smoke.

Women are also more likely than men to develop small-cell lung cancer, which spreads quickly, and adenocarcinoma, which accounts for about 40% of lung cancer cases in women.

[AMNews:</a> Dec. 1, 2003. Lung cancer deadlier than breast cancer for women … American Medical News](<a href=“http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2003/12/01/hlsc1201.htm]AMNews:”>http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2003/12/01/hlsc1201.htm)

CountingDown · April 18, 2008, 11:59pm

LTS,
You are such an inspiration. I don’t think your D would be spooked at this point. I think it would fill in the pieces of what she knows from experience and what she has probably always sensed but not definitively known.

I’m sorry I missed the meet-up last week, but we have been spreading this bug back and forth in our house for three months now, and the last thing I wanted to do was to “share” this with anyone else, esp. if you were there. I know all too well how one can have normal looking blood counts yet be immunocompromised.

ADad · April 19, 2008, 12:13am

. .

epistrophy · April 19, 2008, 5:38am

and another

“S. Epatha Merkerson campaigns against smoking”

On the hit television series Law & Order, actress S. Epatha Merkerson’s job as leader of the 27th Precinct involves bringing killers to justice. As spokesperson for Kick Butts Day 2002, Merkerson’s life is imitating art as she helps stop a real-life killer — tobacco.

And kids are the next generation of victims on its hit list.

“I smoked for 23 years, three packs a day,” says Merkerson. “Then one day I woke up and simply couldn’t breathe. I felt as if an elephant was sitting on my chest.”

Merkerson got the wake up call she needed, and quit smoking that day. That was eight years ago, but she still remembers that quitting wasn’t easy.

“I’d tried to quit several times before,” says Merkerson. “I tried every trick and smoking cessation program from the ridiculous to the sublime.”

Initially, even the knowledge that her sister was suffering from smoking-induced lung cancer wasn’t sufficient to make Merkerson drop the habit.

“It’s hard to believe in retrospect, but my sister had been diagnosed with lung cancer for three years before I was able to quit,” says Merkerson. “That gives you some idea how insidiously addictive nicotine can be.”

Merkerson knows from experience that the best way to avoid the consequences of smoking is to never start. And April 3 — Kick Butts Day — helps support that goal.

“Kick Butts Day is an annual initiative to have youth take charge of their own future, and avoid the pain of losing those you love to tobacco-related illnesses,” says Merkerson, who has suffered her share of tobacco-related tragedy. While her sister has beaten the odds and is a lung cancer survivor, others close to Merkerson weren’t so lucky.

“I lost two of my very best friends to smoking,” Merkerson admits. “Yvette and Billie were only in their forties and fifties when they died. We were so close, just the way friends are in high school. And it hurts so much to realize their deaths were completely preventable, and that we could still be here together.”

Merkerson hopes her involvement in Kick Butts Day will make a difference in the lives of young people across the USA.

“Those who are smoking hopefully will look into local smoking cessation programs,” says Merkerson. “And maybe hearing how much it hurts to lose your friends will make smokers and nonsmokers look at this killer in a new way.”

Smoking gun

According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, (CTFK) smoking kills more than 400,000 Americans each year. An additional 50,000 people die from second-hand smoke. That makes smoking more deadly than alcohol, AIDS, car crashes, illegal drugs, murders, and suicides combined.

Millions more suffer from serious tobacco-caused health problems each year without actually dying. Lung cancer, throat cancer, heart disease, stroke and emphysema are just some of the life-threatening diseases linked with smoking. Smoking is also associated with cancers of the mouth, pharynx, esophagus, pancreas, cervix, kidney, and bladder.

The startling fact is that of the roughly 750,000 total youths who become regular daily smokers each year, almost a third will ultimately die from their habit.

Matt Myers, president of the CTFK, is eager to blow through the smoke screen of denial surrounding the addictive nature of tobacco use and the targeting of minors by the tobacco industry.

“Every day, over 5,000 American youths light up for the first time,” says Myers. “And each day, 2,000 more become daily, addicted smokers. Kick Butts Day is a chance for kids to speak back to the tobacco industry and their elected officials.”

Myers and the tobacco industry know that their battle for the hearts and minds of potential smokers starts at an early age. Overall, almost 90 percent of all adult smokers started smoking regularly in their teens.

Once they start, kids often find themselves hooked for life. The CTFK states that almost three out of every four regular smokers in high school have already tried to quit but failed. And while only three percent of daily smokers in high school think they will be smoking in five years, more than 60% are still regular daily smokers seven to nine years later.

And more and more American teens are falling into the trap of smoking addiction.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (CDC) report smoking rates for students in grades 9-12 increased from 27.5 percent in 1991 to 34.8 percent in 1999.

Fueling this rise in addiction is an increasingly aggressive marketing campaign by the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry spends over $8.2 billion a year — more than $22.5 million a day, on advertising and marketing to attract new smokers and to keep people puffing away.

And the toll this marketing takes can also be measured in millions — of young people’s lives. The CTFK reports that if current trends continue, over 5,000,000 of the kids under 18 today will ultimately die from tobacco use.

Fighting back

The CTFK states there is considerable evidence that the tobacco industry can be pushed back, and that young American lives can be saved.

Numerous studies have documented that cigarette tax or price increases reduce both adult and underage smoking. The general consensus is that every 10% increase in the real price of cigarettes will reduce overall cigarette consumption by approximately three to five percent. It will also reduce the number of kids who smoke by about six or seven percent.

Public education efforts, community and school-based programs, smoking cessation groups, and laws restricting youth access to tobacco products can each significantly reduce tobacco use. Research and experience also show that these individual elements are most effective when they are integrated into a comprehensive program.

California, Massachusetts, Oregon, Florida, and other states have applied this approach and have established the following conclusions:

<pre><code>* When adequately funded, comprehensive state tobacco preventions programs can quickly and substantially reduce tobacco use.

These programs must be insulated from inevitable attempts by the tobacco industry to reduce funding and interfere with their successful operation.

Funding for tobacco prevention programs must be sustained over time to protect initial reductions in tobacco use, and to achieve further success.
</code></pre>

While the programs are out there to help, Merkerson knows that quitting and deciding not to start are still very much personal decisions. And the rewards are just as personal.

“I feel so much healthier after quitting,” says Merkerson. “My husband’s happy, we have a smoke-free home, and he loves kissing me.”

“Whether it’s quitting or never starting, do it for the ones you love.”

[USATODAY.com</a> - S. Epatha Merkerson campaigns against smoking](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/spotlight/2002/04/03-merkerson.htm]USATODAY.com”>http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/spotlight/2002/04/03-merkerson.htm)

MaryTN · April 19, 2008, 10:30am

I really appreciate the richness of this statement

Thanks!!!

sax · April 19, 2008, 11:24am

LTS. Thank you for sharing some of your story.

Of course you did poorly in conduct. It is, after all, the part of you that is unwilling to compromise. It is the fight in you to do things on your own terms. The fight that brings you in front of a Dr. that says “now hold on a minute…I’m not doing that.” It just makes such great sense.

Hope you are feeling better.

ADad · April 19, 2008, 11:41am

LTS, thank you so much for sharing that part of your story.

I tutor at a youth shelter. I see many young women such as you were. If it’s OK with you, I will be sharing your story with them.

latetoschool · April 19, 2008, 12:32pm

I just finished reading McMafia - Journey through the Global Criminal Underworld (Glenny); in the chapter The Future of Organized Crime, the author uses a phrase “a single mouse cannot possibly survive in a house full of cats”…it made me think of cancer, and how this cowardly disease can possibly prevail when I have so many weapons aimed at it…(as an aside, excellent book, if anyone is curious).

Sax, I spent so much time in the principal’s office, it wasn’t even funny. I was always completely confused as to how I kept arriving there, too. My mother was simply horrified and appalled.

ADad, if I could convey one important point to any young person who is struggling, it would be that education - and the strategic application of the result of that education - is the way out. But education doesn’t necessarily have to be formal, as you already would have considered. In my case, it had to be; the public school system was very poor where I raised my daughter (I actually visited the school and interviewed the principal when she was four years old). So I had to go for the school where it was necessary to pay tuition. But there were many “free” ways to education my daughter as well - for example, for $.25, I could buy a newspaper, and read it to her. A three year old doesn’t really care if they’re being read to from a nice, clean picture book, or from the editorial column of the local newspaper - if it’s the parent doing the reading, communicating, interacting, and sharing, it somehow works. I didn’t have any money, but, I could scrap together enough for newspapers, or bus fare to get to the library etc.

This sort of thing boomerangs though - today, we own what must be simply thousands of books. My daughter is an obsessive reader and I am constantly being hit up for money for more books, even today. And I always cave, and pay. LOL.

CountingDown, thank you for that. One of my oncologists - the one who didn’t want me to go to New York - explained to me what can happen if an infection hits. Until he explained it I didn’t understand that if such a thing happens, it’s not a simple matter of getting antibiotics and going on one’s merry way. So I am trying to be a little more careful…

jym626 · April 19, 2008, 12:53pm

But LTS, you never answered the all important question-- did any of the sugestions posted here help you get on CC from your new laptop?? ;)

latetoschool · April 19, 2008, 1:01pm

jym626 yes!!! I now can access CC from my new laptop. Using the “remember me” field helps too - yesterday, I wrote a long post, then, selected “post quick reply”, and got an error message that I was not authorized. Populating “remember me” solved the problem…

somemom · April 19, 2008, 5:06pm

Hmmm, LTS, if you are steriodally swollen, lets have the LTS doll, replete with red shiny heels and long blonde hair, be a bobble head doll for our cars- imagine hundreds of CCs partners across the planet with an LTS bobble head on the dash- beats a hula dancer!!!

Maybe those low conduct marks are indicative of your feisty personality that carried forward to make you the “not going along to get along” person, but the fighting this b-----d smc every step of the way, questioning every doctor and getting every step to be right for you, not just the “usual!”

epistrophy · April 19, 2008, 7:09pm

Dartmouth Professor Honored for Lung Cancer Research

**“DMS professor honored by American Cancer Society”

Ethan Dmitrovsky, the Andrew Wallace Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology and professor of medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, has been named a Clinical Research Professor by the American Cancer Society. This honor, only awarded to two or three people each year, is the ACS’s leading grant award, and it recognizes a researcher’s contributions to science and to patient care, and supports their work in mentoring future generations of researchers.

The multi-year grant will support Dmitrovsky’s ongoing studies of innovative ways to treat and prevent lung cancer, the number one cause of cancer death for men and women in the United States.**

“This is really recognition for my team and for Dartmouth,” says Dmitrovsky. “We’ve made tremendous progress while I’ve been working here due to the collaborative efforts of my outstanding colleagues from Norris Cotton Cancer Center, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Dartmouth Medical School, and Dartmouth College. Our team is now moving research findings in lung cancer from the laboratory bench into the clinic.”

Dmitrovsky’s team is particularly interested in retinoids, natural or synthetic compounds derived from vitamin A used in cancer therapy and prevention. This group has systematically chipped away at understanding the pathways and mechanisms of the retinoids and their effect on lung cancer biology and treatment.

“The research conducted by Ethan’s laboratory has made major contributions to the development of targeted therapies now widely used in cancer treatment,” says Mark Israel, the director of Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. “He’s doing important research, and he’s a wonderful example of someone involved in translational research, where his findings are put to use treating patients.”

Dmitrovsky describes his research as both translational and bi-directional. The latter refers to work moving discoveries made at the bench to the bedside, and then returning them back to the laboratory for refinement.

“This honor reflects Ethan’s dedication to his work and to the community,” says Dartmouth Medical School Dean Bill Green. “He is part of the team that provides contemporary cancer care to people in northern New England. This award from the ACS is well deserved.”

Not only will the grant money support Dmitrovsky’s laboratory, the award will also be used in Dmitrovsky’s efforts to serve the broader cancer research and cancer survivor communities. For example, he serves on the board of scientific counselors of the National Cancer Institute and has been on the scientific advisory board of the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

“This significant grant from the ACS means a great deal to me and my team. I look forward to working with my colleagues to advance our research, put our findings to use in the clinic, and continue to serve the cancer community,” says Dmitrovsky.

[Dartmouth</a> News - DMS professor honored by American Cancer Society - 04/18/08](<a href=“http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2008/04/18.html]Dartmouth”>http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2008/04/18.html)

epistrophy · April 19, 2008, 11:42pm

and two more

**“Cans for Cancer provide dollars for research”

Bob Norris knows the joy of cancer survival and the despair of cancer death.

He’s a five-year survivor of lung cancer, a category that has just an 18 percent survival rate at that juncture.

He also has the fresh memory of losing his wife, Bonnie Lynne, to the same disease last year.

His resolve has been to increase his involvement in raising money for cancer research through events such as the coming Craven County Relay for Life.**

Two years ago, before his wife’s diagnosis, he had walked in the relay with her by his side as his caregiver. He also transports those who need assistance from the parking lot to the relay site at Grover C. Fields Middle School.

“Last year I got to drive her,” he said. They walked the survivors’ lap together - as each other’s caregiver. But, by autumn, she was gone.

He has continued another project - collecting cans for cancer.

About half of his 74 neighbors in the Deer Run subdivision off Crump Farm Road hang small bags of cans on their mailbox each Tuesday morning.

Norris makes his rounds beginning at 8 a.m., collecting the aluminum in the back of his pickup truck or in a small modified cart he pulls behind a scooter.

He wears a Duke cap and flies a Blue Devil flag from the back of the cart.

“Oh, that’s where I had my surgery,” he said. Norris is a graduate of a rival Atlantic Coast Conference school, Maryland.

The first year he sold his cans and presented to the Relay for Life committee a check for $76 and last year the total ballooned to $514.

“The reason I do all this is so that when my grandchildren are grown, maybe cancer will be like polio and we won’t have to worry about it,” he said.

Now, with added donations from people such as car dealer Nick Arnold and Kim Hill at the BridgePoint Marina, he turned in a check this week for $1,002.

“It helps. It all helps,” he said. “And I’m proof that the money that is raised by events such as Relay go to cancer research that works.”

Emotionally, Friday’s opening ceremony at the 14th Craven Relay will be double-edged. Amid the celebration of life, the memory of losing his wife of 50 years is still fresh.

“It was hard at the end,” he said. “There was, there was nothing I could do for her.”

He gets up from his dining room table and walks away to compose himself and returns more upbeat, with a family photo album. Among the pages are the 50th wedding anniversary party that includes a proclamation of Bob and Bonnie day by New Bern Mayor Tom Bayliss.

The couple’s romance dated to their teenage years in Maryland. He was 18 and she was a mere 14. He rode a motorcycle and wore the traditional black leather jacket.

“My future mother-in-law was not too impressed,” he deadpanned. “But after 20 or 30 years, she approved.”

After high school, he joined the Army in 1952 and was stationed in Germany for three years.

A year and a half into his tour, he proposed from a telephone booth outside Munich.

Coinciding with the phone call, Bob’s brother, Phil, presented Bonnie with the ring.

He returned from the military and the two began a family. Using the G.I. Bill, he went to the University of Maryland and got a degree in education. He taught shop - one of his favorite boyhood classes - for 32 years in public schools and four more in a private school.

The couple looked for a retirement home in the early 1990s, making trips from Virginia to Florida. Traveling through New Bern one night, they found their spot.

“We were driving across the old (John Lawson) bridge and we could see lights of the city clock tower,” he recalled. “Bonnie said, This is where I want to live.'”

They were impressed by the small-town atmosphere, hospitality and quiet.

“The first New Year’s we drove up to an intersection on Martin Luther King and there we were - alone with a blinking light at midnight - on New Year’s Eve,” he said with a laugh.

In 2003, doctors found a shadow on his lung. After extensive chemotherapy, two-thirds of his right lung was removed.

A year after his cancer bout, he walked in the 2004 Relay at the urging of a survivor friend, Lynn Reel.

“I was apprehensive. She forced me to go,” he said. “But it was almost like a religious experience. I walked around the track and there were young people and kids and older people and they are all clapping and yelling and hollering for you. I don’t cry very easily, but I almost lost it, it was so emotional for me.”

Friday, it will be reunion time again, and he knows he won’t walk the Survivors’ Lap alone.

[Local:</a> Cans for Cancer provide dollars for research | cancer, year, years : Sun Journal](<a href=“http://www.newbernsj.com/news/cancer_39160___article.html/year_years.html]Local:”>http://www.newbernsj.com/news/cancer_39160___article.html/year_years.html)

****************************

**“Cure by Design fashions another success”

Before sashaying down the catwalk in a designer party dress, heels and professionally styled hair and makeup, six-year lung cancer survivor Jackie Secula said she’s proud to wear her scars.

“This is not a disfigurement,” Secula said of the scar she received when doctors removed a large lobe from her back. “It signifies life. It’s why I’m alive.”**

Secula, 67, and more than 45 other local cancer survivors volunteered as runway models for the American Cancer Society’s Annual Cure by Design Fashion Show and Luncheon Friday. The Broadway-themed event, which featured the latest designs from local and national retailers, was presented by Shands Healthcare. The event raised more than $50,000, which will directly benefit the American Cancer Society’s life-saving research, advocacy and treatment programs.

In its 18th year, Gainesville’s Cure by Design welcomed more than 300 guests to the University of Florida Hilton. New York-based fashion designer and co-founder of Cure by Design, Alex Garfield, returned to premiere his latest women’s clothing line, Peace of Cloth.

“This is my favorite place to do an event,” he said, calling Gainesville the birthplace of his passion for philanthropy. “My life changed when I came here.”

During the event, Garfield and master of ceremonies Storm Roberts announced that the American Cancer Society’s corporate offices are now considering promoting Gainesville’s successful Cure by Design fundraising model in communities around the country.

“We’re here to celebrate survivorship,” Garfield said.

“These models are courageous, warm, considerate, fearless survivors. That’s why we do this.”

The event opened with a taped welcome from Robin Roberts, anchor for ABC News’ “Good Morning America” and cancer survivor.

“My spirit is with you in Gainesville today,” Roberts said while on set. She thanked local guests for their contributions and congratulated the models, who ranged from pediatric patients at Shands to women and men in their 60s and 70s.

The runway show was set to popular Broadway tunes and included dancing segments, props and nonstop cheers from a packed Hilton salon.

During the event’s live auction, a gown donated by local designer Jacquelyn Brooks was sold for $5,000 to Garfield, who also donated his “Peace of Cloth” outfits to the models who wore them. Dillard’s and Uptown Lady also donated clothes to the young survivors who participated in the fashion show.

Carrie Krowne, 12-year breast cancer survivor and volunteer chairwoman of the event’s runway show, said she looks forward to the fundraiser as proof of the support and compassion that exists for all people affected by cancer.

“Cancer changes you forever. And for those of us that get involved in this, it’s a reminder of how precious and important life is.”

[News</a> - - Gainesville.com](<a href=“http://www.gainesville.com/article/20080419/NEWS/930649308/1002/NEWS]News”>http://www.gainesville.com/article/20080419/NEWS/930649308/1002/NEWS)

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