The Rose

Day 25 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-11-10T10:44:00.000-08:00

I’ve been blogging for 25 days, and I could probably do so for many more. You’ll just have to wait for the book! But to mark our last day, I wanted to give a glimpse of what some of those other stories would look like:

1. When we started The Rose breast cancer incidence rate and lifetime risk of being diagnosed was one in 13, now it is one in 8.
2. “You knew it was a snake when you picked it up.” One of Dixie’s most famous lines and unfortunately it did apply to those (very few) folks who wanted to use The Rose for their own purposes. When you are working to stay ‘on mission’ there will always be someone trying to pull you off of it.

3. “Dorothy I need a Cow Boop!” A cow what? Yes that was one of the tasks given to me by one of our former docs. Resourceful we are, especially when you have Cousin Brad who found a Cow Boop!

4. “It’s always a matter of money.” From keeping the doors open to treatment options for uninsured women, it comes down to money and funds. In fact, there was a time when the saying was, “a woman’s prognosis depends on how good her insurance is and how much money she has in the bank.” Thank goodness, The Rose has created an option for the uninsured.

5. When Rose Kushner found a lump in her breast, back in 1979, she was told by her surgeon that is was probably ‘nothing’ and if by chance it was, then he’d tell her husband Harvey and go ahead and do her mastectomy. Rose’s response was too graphic for our blog. It took her visiting 16 surgeons before she found one who would wake her up and let her make the decision. Hence the birth -- due to Rose’s advocacy -- of legislation and protocols that require the “two stage procedure” and “informed consent.”

6. Nothing is EVER off the record. In those early days we counted on local newspaper reporter, Clara Clay to tell the story of breast cancer and early detection. She would spend time with Dixie, meticulously recording facts and figures, listening to Dixie recite the steps of breast self exam and nuances of mammograms. One day Clara turned off the recorder and posited a simple question. “You are so passionate about this Dr. Dixie. What made you want to be a doctor?” she asked. Dixie thinking every thing was “off the record” (obviously I wasn’t present during this interview) started talking and Clara spent another hour with her, never taking a note. The next day, the headlines of the Pasadena Citizen read “Local Surgeon Overcomes Rough Beginnings as a High School Drop-Out.”

7. Gynecologist, Dr. White covered the $25 for Dixie to take the Med Cat exam after doing her pelvic exam and learning Dixie had a 3.9 GPA and was hoping to become a Lab Tech.

8. “None of us knows how long we have on this earth. The only thing we do have is right now, right here and each other. Breast cancer patients have taught me that I need to appreciate every sunrise and every sunset.” Another Dixie-ism. "Hugs are good for the immune system.” It's true! There is clinical proof that touching is healing.

9. Women are smart. They know what they need to do but taking care of everyone else gets in the way more often than not.

10. Educating women is good. Empowering women starts by making sure there is access to care.

11. Rose Employees are always a huge part of the success of every fundraising event and especially the Shrimp Boil. The create baskets for the Raffle, huge baskets filled with all kinds of great gifts, the bake cookies and cakes for the dessert table and the come out in mass to volunteer throughout the day. They are the best!!

12. National studies confirm that being part of a Support Group extends life.

13. Soft spoken and a true southern lady, Diana was our second paid support staff. She survived stage 4 cancer because she heard Dixie on the radio saying “if anyone tells you that lump is a cyst—just by feeling it—you need another doctor.” Diane made every patient feel like there was nothing more important in the world than for her to visit with them and tend to their immediate needs at that very moment.
14. One of the saddest cases was the 63 year old, whose husband had divorced her taking with him the insurance. It was all she could do to find any kind of work at that age and she was banking on staying healthy until she was 65. The lump in her breast put a crimp in that idea. Did we ultimately help her get coverage through Medicaid/Medicare? Yes. It took over 13 months of processing paperwork.

15. In Texas, 59% of the businesses are small businesses which usually do not offer group health insurance. In 79% of the families we serve, at least one person is working, sometimes at two or more jobs. “Working poor” is a true statement.

16. In the early years, volunteers made fabric capes (as opposed to disposable gowns) for our patients to wear. We’d carry the ‘used ones’ home each night to wash, until someone donated a washer dryer set to each center. We wanted each patient to feel comfortable. We also hated that the mammogram plate was always cold so we bought a big “kitty Kat” warmer to place on the ‘buckee’ (plate) between patients. It sounded like a good idea to us but didn’t work.

17. Nancy Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, showered us with more than one story of ‘real class.”

18. In the first decade, everyone who became an employee had already volunteered in some large or small fashion.

19. Then there the time we were at another breast cancer conference when Dixie, during a reception, started debating with this guy who spoke -- with such a pleasant Swedish accent-- about the superiority of zero-mammography over film screen. He let her talk ‘on and on.’ The next day, as she sat on the front row, she came face-to-face with her ‘debate partner” --internationally famous mammographer, Lazlo Tabar, M.D. who called on the “surgeon” for her opinion throughout the rest of the conference.

20. Women under the age of 40 account for 20% of all the breast cancers we diagnose each year.

21. “We only have one limitation: the one we put on ourselves.” This is the motto of a high school drop out who couldn’t even get a job at the Five and Dime and became a ‘world famous’ surgeon--Dixie.

22. Writing grant proposals is an art in itself. Getting them done by the deadline is a constant challenge when your staff is small and doing many tasks. I’ll never forget the day, long ago, when we finally finished writing our largest request for $100,000. All was ready to go except the 20 copies of the 40-page document. I walked into the office to find the parts of the copy machine strewn about on the floor, a repairman grumbling with his head in the inner workings, hundreds of papers lined up on a table and my grant writer in tears. Somehow the guy resurrected that old machine (another donated item) and got it to print the final copy. “Oh, Dorothy, don’t worry so,” my grant writer said. “It will be fine. I’ll send it Federal Express. I would have gotten in the car and driven it to San Antonio if I had to.”

“It’s supposed to be going to Austin, Verlyn!” I groaned.

(Just another day in the life of the ol’ Bailey’s Savings and Loan.)

23. Running the Rose was a bit like being Colonel Potter in the MASH series. Breast cancer is a ‘war’ that no one volunteers to be in; finding help for the uninsured another war that shouldn’t be. From iconic physicians to a whole bunch of Radars, it takes a lot of skill from a lot of different folks to move a woman from diagnosis to treatment and recovery. We do it every day, one woman at a time.

24. Remembering the day we were trying to get an uninsured woman into treatment and her phone was cut off because she hadn’t paid her bill. Our patient navigator called (then) SW Bell and ‘reasoned’ with the supervisor (after going through several folks) and finally got it turned back on…just in time.

25. We celebrate a lot, birthdays, service awards, finding another service for our women. When donations come in, we walk the halls ringing the bell (yes it is an actual bell) and sharing the good news with patients, physicians, volunteers and employees.

BONUS: We maintain a prayer list and more than one ‘outside’ person has called me to ask for a name to be put on it.

Our next Twenty Five Years are ahead. Who knows what lies ahead? A cure for breast cancer? True health plans for everyone? Perhaps The Rose nationwide?

We are so thankful to the many folks who have been on this journey with us and who will be with us in the years to come.

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.

© 2011 Dorothy Gibbons. All rights reserved.

Deserving of Recognition (continued) - Day 24 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-11-09T13:44:00.000-08:00

More on those we’ll be honoring at our 25^th Anniversary Silver Rose Gala, November 10.

Since her voice is known all across Texas and much of the nation as well, Connie Yates often gets teased about her southern accent, but I know that behind that southern charm is a woman whose determination has moved mountains, especially when it comes to being a champion for The Rose. As Director of Public Affairs and Governmental Relations for Randalls Food Markets Connie’s remarkable in-store announcements and radio spots are unmistakable, her enthusiasm bringing life to her message.

When face-to-face with Connie, her passion is evident. Her bright demeanor is dimmed only when talking about her sister who lost her battle with breast cancer two years ago. Maybe it was seeing and knowing what her sister went through after the diagnosis that motivated Connie to be such a champion but somehow I think her unstoppable efforts to increase awareness and funds runs even deeper.

Connie’s most recent foray in support of The Rose involved convincing Channel 2 to team up with Randalls by producing breast cancer awareness public service announcement spots aired at all Randalls stores and featuring the incredibly beautiful and well known anchor Dominque Sachse. Admittedly, Channel 2 (KPRC) is an old friend also, so maybe it didn’t take a lot of convincing but even so, Connie isn’t someone you can easily say no to.

She is a stunning lady, always perfectly dressed and her flashing, deep set steel blue eyes demand your fullest attention. Her gorgeous hair belies her youth and energy. She’s easy to spot in any crowd and in crowds is usually where I’ve found her.

Randalls events at the different stores -- bake sales, the raffles and the times the managers served breakfast in tuxedoes and long dresses to the staff as another way to raise money in October -- are fond memories for me. Randalls’ giving involves everyone: employees, managers, vendors and most importantly customers. I couldn’t be any prouder than when I walk through a Randalls and see aisles all decked out in pink balloons and staff sporting pink ribbons. I marvel at the way cashiers encourage customers to add another dollar or two to their purchases because it is such a good cause.

Randalls has been a supporter of The Rose since 1992 and after nearly two decades they have helped with virtually every service area, from funding our Young Women’s Services to helping to purchase our first mobile mammography unit in 2006, a service that covers 14 counties and one Randalls has continued to support year after year. Whenever we have guests at The Rose and I tour them through the Randalls Resource and Conference Center, a huge area that has hosted hundreds of educational and fundraising events, I explain that those dollars they are asked to donate in October at Randalls stores made that area possible. Seeing the Conference Center or the Mobile Unit brings it all home for Randalls Good Neighbor Program.

Each fall, at the 34 Houston-area Randalls stores, customers and employees Scan-A-Dollar for breast cancer. Connie explains, “We say ‘One dollar many times makes many dollars.’” To date, that has totaled $1.5 million. I’m not sure how she’s done it year in and year out, but I suspect it has been Connie’s influence that has kept those fundraising dollars close to home serving not just The Rose but other breast cancer organizations.

Some of the best Randalls/Rose moments are the times Dawne Profitt, Randalls Public Affairs and Governmental Relations Manager, would call and leave a message saying, “We have our total amount of our gift to The Rose.” She would never tell me the amount in the message and after hours tracking her down, I would learn again of their remarkable gift. I think Dawne likes to hear me scream. Dawne and Connie are such a team, a dream team, when it comes to partnering for The Rose.

Making Every Day Matter …

Some folks are supporters long before you even know them and as I go through 25 years of scrapbooks, pictures of one couple keep showing up: Bob and Elaine Domec followed closely behind by Corkey and Debbie Turner. Be it a Soroptimist event or a Yoga fundraiser, one of those four would show up, sometimes all of them together.

Bob became a member of our Board in 2003 and in 2005 he brought Corkey to the table. I knew right away putting those two together had to spell trouble since keeping them in line during board meetings was hard enough. Bob, who abhors wearing socks and hates to dress up (ties do not appear in his wardrobe) has a quick wit and never misses a chance to use it. Granted Corkey is the quiet one, (conservative in dress, he does wear socks and ties!) but then every comedy act has to have a straight man.

When it came to breast cancer however both were serious. Bob’s daughter had battled the disease and he had lost a niece to it; both women were way too young to face such ordeals. Corkey retells the day Debbie thought she had found something and how upset and worried she was. Thankfully her results were benign but the agony she experienced was a memory he will never forget. So both these men, these incredibly wonderful men, bring a deep sense of purpose to their work with The Rose.

I remember the meeting they brought up a new fundraising idea. Boy, did we need new ideas as we were in another one of those especially difficult years, watching every dollar. (Actually most of our years are like this but this one was tougher than usual.)

Bob and Corkey are Casa Olé franchisees and they proposed getting as many restaurants as possible to take one day out of every week in October and give 10% of the stores’ sales to The Rose. I didn’t really think it would fly—lots of restaurants offer to support this or that charity with portions of the profits but nobody donates 10% of sales—that was huge!

They were committed, even if it was just their stores, they intended to do it. So we needed a campaign, and we needed to brand it. Enter our ace communications person (at that time) Maggie Phillips and after lots of brainstorming we came up with “Make Tuesdays Matter.” And, matter they did. Bob and Corkey even convinced the Mexican Restaurants Inc. to include their Casa Olé Restaurants which were managed company stores.

It helped that Larry Forehand founder of Casa Olé, who had opened the first restaurant in Pasadena 35 years ago, was also an old friend and supporter of The Rose.

The campaign began and every Tuesday Casa Olés around Harris County and beyond, from Pasadena to Hwy 290 and into Baytown and Conroe, decorated in pink and joined in. Imagine seeing Make Tuesdays Matter signs on every table at the restaurants, with information about breast cancer symptoms and the importance of early detection displayed. Make Tuesdays Matter banners lined the walls and migrated to other businesses and the city joined in. Over the years, other money-making efforts were added, one year Corkey raised $7,000 selling Pink Ribbons which lined the walls with names of survivors or loved ones who had lost their battle. Local businesses reserved Tuesdays as a special employee “day out” for lunch, and regular customers changed their day to Tuesday. One very special man gave a little extra each visit to sweeten the pot.

Year after year, they came up with different ways to promote Make Tuesdays Matter, maintaining the program through the toughest economic times and to date Casa Ole has raised more than $126,000! Astounding!

Another difference made by people who care. We treasure Bob and Corkey more than they can ever imagine.

And we send our heartfelt thanks to all of the participating Casa Olé restaurants: 7750 Spencer Hwy., Pasadena; 1520 E. Southmore, Pasadena; 2726 Spencer, Pasadena; 3121 Palmer Highway, Texas City; 20131 Highway 59 North, Humble; 12350 Gulf Freeway, Houston; 2608 Highway 36 S., Brenham; 1020 Federal Road, Houston; 5920-A Highway 6 North, Houston; 12203 Murphy Road, Stafford; 11120 Northwest Freeway, Houston; 3100 East Broadway, Pearland; and 2010 Westview, Conroe.

This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.

Deserving of Recognition (continued) - Day 23 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-11-08T15:50:00.000-08:00

More on the individuals and entities we’ll be honoring at our 25^th Anniversary Silver Rose Gala, November 10.
I first heard about Alden Clark from our employee Cheryl Gallager. She was our development associate assigned to major and corporate gifts and besides being an incredibly beautiful woman, she had the most gorgeous hair. She talked about SoK and her hairdresser, Alden, with a touch of awe in her voice. Even when her schedule got too overbooked, she’d rather have the gray showing and wait until whenever he had an opening than let anyone else “touch her hair.” The choice of gray over another stylist? Well … knowing Cheryl that was a huge endorsement.

Cheryl introduced Carol Wright our development director to Alden and suddenly Carol’s hair is looking pretty great also. Those two starting talking to Alden and somewhere during that time these handcrafted, pink hair extensions started adorning the heads of women at our events. I still don’t know the exact process Alden’s staff uses, but I’ve heard the hair has to be dyed and then attached to the tiny clips that are then secured in a person’s locks. Carol and her team would sport those pieces during many of our events, and Alden’s staff would come out and sell them for only $10 -- all of which went entirely to The Rose. It didn’t take long before those sales started adding up and SoK became a pretty significant partner.

I remember one hot, sticky Bikers Against Breast Cancer event. There was Alden’s team; setting up under a small tent, with their hair pieces, scissors and curling irons. It was a pretty uncomfortable day but his team stayed in good spirits, patiently attaching piece after piece onto the heads of women that had just been wearing helmets.

That’s when I dared Michelle Hanson’s brother-in-law Charles to get one put in his beard—the primary amount of hair on this young man’s head -- and after a bit of cajoling he agreed. What a hoot it was to see him preen with his over long, pink goatee. I finally had one put into my locks at the 2011 Shrimp Boil. And I got another one on Pink Street during White Linen Night in the Heights. Did I mention the Alden’s SoK team comes to all our events?

I’ve heard the story about Alden’s third grade report card with the teacher’s note that his work would improve if he would stop braiding his friend’s hair. Aren’t we glad he didn’t? He explains that even after 20 years and getting his masters and a PhD, he’s still doing what he loves -- making women feel beautiful.

I know for sure he has made a difference in the lives of the women who’ve gone to him, into their first or second round of chemotherapy and watching with horror as their hair falls out in handfuls. He has a special way of helping them through that time and shows them how to wear a wig with style. Somehow knowing he’ll be the one to remake them once their hair grows back provides the hope they need to get through one more thing associated with breast cancer.

Last Christmas, Alden sent me a book that features the story about the circumstances surrounding his adoption of his son Travis – a story everyone should read. You see, Travis would most likely have died without Alden helping his mother—a complete stranger to him. And, if Alden had not taken Travis in, that child was destined to a life no one would wish on another human being. Alden hates such talk, saying Travis was a gift to him, but we know a miracle when we see it.

I’m glad we’re honoring Alden at the gala because beyond the hairdresser, is the philanthropist and father, someone who cares and whose caring has truly made a difference in so many lives.

And now for a few thoughts about KPRC …

For the Rose to have a professionally produced commercial in one year was a pretty big deal; for us to have two in as many years was “pert near a miracle.” But then, around The Rose, we have come to expect miracles. From the beginning our relationship with KPRC has been nothing less than a miraculous adventure.

It all started when John Mills, sales associate for KPRC, was traveling south on Loop 610, pondering over the loss of a major medical center sponsor for October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. That sponsor had held the October spot for years and virtually out of the blue they dropped it. Another out of the blue event occurred when John, driving at maximum speed, happened to looked up and saw a sign…actually it was giant pink ribbon enveloping the words “The Rose” on a building. John had never really heard of The Rose but there was no doubting what that pink ribbon meant so as soon as he landed back at the station he started calling.

We have to stop here so I can fill you in on the story of the sign (which deserves a whole chapter itself). The long and short of it was that when we signed the lease on the space in Foundation Surgical Hospital for our second location (renamed from The Rose Joan Gordon Center to The Rose Galleria) our agreement included signage -- in fact, a sign with major placement on their building. Little did we or the leasing folks know at the time of signing that Bellaire only allows one sign per building. But thanks to the Board’s tenacious Tom Watson and his pal, our real estate agent, Marshall Clinkscale, a sign was installed. Granted, it was placed on the garage immediately adjacent to the Foundation Medical Tower but a sign it was—and when lit at night, it was magnificent! To have a Rose presence on loop 610, one of the busiest highways in Houston Texas was no small feat and to this day people comment about seeing our sign and marvel at how we’ve grown.

But back to the commercial. John contacted Carol Wright, our development director and visits followed. He was so taken with The Rose, he brought his boss out. We all talked. We shared the pictures of women who had late stage breast cancer, huge cancers that erupted through the skin and explained women still come to us in that bad of shape today. Meeting followed meeting and before we knew it, we figured out a way to afford a commercial and air time. We would trade printing three newsletters for the cost of the advertising on TV. At least that is what we thought.

Before we knew it, we were introduced to the then General Manager and later to the next general manager. The news production crew, led by Tracy Hatfield, got involved and soon October was filled with The Rose manning a phone bank nearly every day. We pulled out all the stops and called upon friends and collaborators and covered the bank. The best show was when 25 men arrived sporting pink T-shirts with the words “Tough Enough to Wear Pink” emblazoned across their chests.

We produced our first commercial, a good one, with friends and colleagues posing as patients. Our message was clear and the spot had some success in raising awareness.

October flew by and just as we were catching our breath, John came to us with another idea. Seems there was a national promotion going on, their affiliate was bringing in one of the top names in commercial advertising, a genius known for creating branding with songs and jingles and tying them into commercials that had ten, fifteen, twenty year recognition levels. In fact, we all knew of some of his work. The deal was we would meet Otis, share with him what we hoped to achieve, and he would produce a commercial and a customized song “on the spot.” The only hitch was we had to make the decision on the day of the visit. We were looking at a significant amount of money and a commitment not only to the commercial production but also a year-long schedule for airing it.

I didn’t like that idea. The whole thing bothered me. The Rose doesn’t often make “instant” decisions especially when considering large sums of money. I brought the concept to the Board, explaining the rules as they had laid them out. I was surprised when Mryleen, our new Board Chair, said we needed to hear them out. So board members, all with the authority to make that final decision, arrived at Hotel Za Za, prepared to listen and equally prepared to say no.

The meeting room was elegant to say the least. Big overstuffed couches and chairs, rich browns and coppers splashed through fabrics and brought a subtle richness to the suite. Every comfort had been anticipated for the afternoon meeting -- fresh juice, spring water, great coffee, finger foods and great sweet treats. Everyone was cordial, everything was inviting; until Otis, the star produce and our group started talking.

Otis began asking questions about The Rose. His questions seemed harmless enough but with each response he drilled down to a new level. Bob, Corkey and Myrleen responded with our usual descriptions: The Rose was special. The Rose save lives. We were unique. No one else did what The Rose did. We served people no one else wanted. At one point, Bob said “If we could get you to come to The Rose you’d see why it is so different.”

What Otis did next caused the dam to burst. He dismissed one explanation after another, finally saying everyone thought their company or organization was special and most places simply weren’t. His words were just south of being placating, and my Taurus personality was getting more than riled. The Bull is always ready to move from one side of the coral to the other until it is backed into a corner, then it comes out raging. Otis had done more than that, he had pushed until there was nowhere else to go. Then he started waving the red flag when he said The Rose just wasn’t a big deal!

That was when the battle began.

For the next thirty minutes, Otis and I fired insults and digs back and forth at each other. He dismissed every statement I said and with every dismissal, I dug in deeper. I made it pretty clear that we were the customers, and he made it equally clear the he was the expert and most importantly the artist. He hammered away at me, challenging everything I said about The Rose and just as I was ready to walk out, he said, “I think I’m ready to create your commercial and your song.”

At that point, it didn’t matter. He could jump out the window for all I cared. I was ready to leave, said so, and started gathering my stuff. The Board folks were also pretty annoyed but his people talked us down, promised us it would be worth the wait and literally begged us to let Otis “work his magic.” We relented. Some of us visited the buffet, others walked out to the balcony. I was still fuming. Myrleen kept reminding me we had come this far, we might as well hear him out.

After about thirty minutes, Otis and his team returned. They set up the background music and the vocalist moved behind a microphone. No one said anything. People were urged to gather around them. I was moved up to the front, standing next to Myrleen. I fidgeted, swaying from one foot to the other, I just wanted out of there.

Then the song began. I was prepared to hate it with all my being, my jaw was locked, my shoulders scrunched up and tight, arms crossed over my chest. The song continued, I tensed up even more when tears flooded my eyes. “I refuse to let that arrogant man know I like it!” I swore to myself. The verses continued, capturing everything I had said about The Rose and more. They had fashioned my words into phrases that carried deep meaning with palpable passion. My heart swelled in my chest, my throat was tight, I forced my face to remain neutral, but those darn tears started rolling down my checks.

I could feel the glances from the Board members. Myrleen looked at me, eyebrows raised.

“It has some potential” I said.

We all laughed. Actually, it was an amazing arrangement and did indeed capture the essence of The Rose. The deal was struck. In a few weeks, we would see the first drafts of the commercial. Otis had described its major components and how it would come together.

We started walking out of the room together. Otis casually slipped an arm over my shoulder. Not expecting such an intimate gesture, I pulled back. His laugh was gentle, and he apologized for being so rough on me. He said he had to dig down to get past my “elevator speech” and into my passion if he had any hope of finding the right message for The Rose.

Then he explained he was fighting his own battle with cancer. This was a second go around for him. His lovely wife joined us and shared some stories of his last few months. She pulled me aside and with a knowing look assured me that Otis was already “in love” with The Rose and we would be incredibly pleased with his final product.

We were. The commercial was more rich, more effective, than anything we could have imagined. In fact, I’ve been at health fairs and meetings and had people come up to me and attempt to sing the jingle, “There’s a light in the window…”

Otis gave us another gift. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “Let me redo your logo. However, you only get one chance at it. I’ll send you several different designs but you have to pick one of them ‘cause I don’t have time to fool around with revisions.”

I agreed but when the mock-ups came, he had included a rose, the flower, within each offering. At that time, we didn’t allow a rose to be part of our logo (every Tom, Dick and Steven who owned a breast imaging center used the flower with their name and long ago I had grown tired of people mistaking them for us.) Since Otis said we only had one shot at it, I didn’t even bother to call him.

Weeks passed and one afternoon he called. As always, his voice gruff, his words were direct, “You didn’t let me know how you liked the logo. “

“Otis, you said we only had one chance at this and your folks (I had learned some diplomacy) put a rose in every one of samples. Remember when we all talked about the logo and I said we don’t use the flower with our name?”

After a long pause, he muttered: “Oh right, I forgot that. Let me send you some different ones.”

I smiled.

So our new logo was created replacing one that had served us well for more than a decade. Now with a pink ribbon and our name, we had a new image to enter a new level of marketing.

During its October campaigns, KPRC created incredible human interest stories that touch hearts and encourage women to take action. In 2010, the station’s “31 Days of Breast Cancer” featured personal narratives from both male and female survivors, patients in treatment, and family members dealing with breast cancer or the loss of a loved one. Following this coverage, demand for appointments flooded The Rose. Most recently, KPRC created the videos for all our honorees that we will share during our 25^th Silver Rose Gala—professionally produced and edited, these segments are works of art that will tell our story extremely well and be treasured by each person featured and honored during our event.

From the beginning, KPRC has been more than a media source. They have been a partner and have gone the extra mile over and over again to bring The Rose and its mission to an ever growing audience. John has been much more than our sales contact, talk about an ambassador, he’s one of the best!

And it all started with a sign on a building.

Deserving of Recognition -- Day 22 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-11-07T18:20:00.000-08:00

On November 10, when we host the first gala that The Rose has put on for The Rose, we’ll be honoring some pretty significant individuals. You’ve already read Vicky’s story. Over the next couple of days you’ll read the stories of others we intend to spotlight.

When Eileen Campbell walks through the door, people know someone important just entered the room. She exudes a level of confidence found in those folks who have rubbed shoulders with major decision makers. Her focus, especially when it comes to anything to do with changing the face of breast cancer, is nothing less than razor sharp and penetrating. When she is extracting answers to difficult questions, she drills until she finds the answers. She’s held some incredibly significant positions as a lobbyist and now as Vice President of Public Policy for Marathon Oil Corporation. Her scope of knowledge is vast and the breast cancer world has benefitted greatly as a result.

My encounters with Eileen have run the gamut. I remember serving on the public policy committee for the Houston Affiliate Susan G. Komen for the Cure and meeting at Marathon. Eileen was in charge and agenda items were ticked off in record speed. We had our assignments; now we needed to get out there and get it done.

For almost two decades, Eileen has championed public-private partnerships to raise awareness of breast cancer and reduce barriers to early detection and access to care. Her crusade began in the mid 90’s when she joined a Houston Affiliate of Susan G. Komen For the Cure® race to support a co-worker. Over the years, her commitment grew, influenced both by her increased involvement with the Komen Houston Affiliate and her own experience with breast cancer. She convinced Marathon to be a presenting sponsor for The Race for the Cure. (And since Houston Komen is The Rose’s largest funder, we’re truly grateful for that!)

Eileen and I have had other encounters -- awards luncheons, fundraising events -- but I did not get to see another side to her until she donated one of Kelly Gale Amen’s masterpiece benches to The Rose. That’s when the woman who can quiet a room with a glance revealed herself to be a real “softy.”

Kelly’s benches are one-of-a-kind sculptured functional works of art. Eileen and husband Doug had purchased the bench at a Houston Komen Pink Tie Gala with the intent of giving it to The Rose. We had the perfect spot for it in our lobby (which was always too bare) and we looked forward to the day we would host a reception for the dedication.

Our event was intimate. Folks from Houston Komen, Eileen and her family, Board members of The Rose, physicians and staff gathered in the Resource Center. That was when I heard Eileen’s story. I knew she had waged her own battle with breast cancer but her telling of that time brought yet another dimension to this dynamic woman.

“During my treatment, I realized how lucky I was to have the support of my family and employer,” she shared. Like every survivor, she fought those very real worries about being around to see her daughters graduate and she gave examples of the many ways her family stood by her and supported her. During her treatment she wasn’t VP of Marathon, she was another woman facing a battle she never expected yet determined to beat this crummy disease. She spoke of hearing the stories of other women in the treatment room and even seeing one of our patient navigators by the side of a woman during chemotherapy.

Then she ended her speech, “I wondered how other women could possibly survive without insurance. No matter what, no matter how much family and friend support, if a woman doesn’t have insurance or some way to get the treatment, she simply isn’t going to live to see her family grow, to see a graduation, a grandchild.”

Her voice cracked at this point and she paused. “That is why I wanted to give this bench to The Rose. I am so thankful there is a Rose in our city. It is the safety net for some many, a place where no one is turned away.”

She reached over and hugged me, and we were both fighting back tears. The bench was dedicated and is now prominently displayed in our lobby. Every time I see a person using it I remember that hug and think how fortunate we are to have Eileen as a Champion.

She’s brought many gifts to The Rose including helping expand and improve our mobile services to corporations and businesses. But perhaps her best gift was her long-time friend Jeanne Gillen. Knowing that Eileen was ending her two-year term as president of the Houston Affiliate, I had reached out to her about serving on our Board. At first she didn’t reply. Then when she did, she hedged, talking about not wanting to make such commitment so soon and the increase in her workload. Of course, I was disappointed.

However, later at a Komen event when I was serving as the guest speaker, she nearly tackled me at the conclusion of my speech. “There is someone I want you to meet,” she announced.

She ushered me through the crowd and soon we were standing in front of a lovely tall, white-haired lady who sported an easy smile. The look in her eyes was a little guarded but quickly turned to curiosity as Eileen launched into her spiel.

“Dorothy, I want you to meet Jeanne! This is the person you need for your Board. She’s dynamic and would be great! Talk to her!” And with that final order, Eileen kind of pushed Jeanne toward me, turned on her heels and left.

Jeanne and I stood there for a moment. I don’t know about her, but I was a bit dazed trying to sort out what had just happened. Finally we smiled and started talking. Jeanne was everything Eileen described. Eventually Jeanne would become a part of the Board (she still teases about how we “dated” for a while…but that’s another story.) She even accepted the role of serving as the chair for our Silver Rose Gala steering committee. What a great addition Jeanne has been to our leadership, and once again, what a great gift Eileen has given to The Rose.

Dr. Mohamed Haq was a part of The Rose’s life before it was ever born. As one of the first, and for a while. the only hematologist and oncologist on staff at Bayshore Medical Center, his was a specialty unlike any others. Trained at M.D. Anderson, Dr. Haq opened his practice in Pasadena in 1980.

I remember when he joined the staff how incredibly gentle and kind he was, traits that have only grown over the years. He used to come to my tiny office in the basement and ask me to pull together slides for him. Looking back, I’m sure he struggled with moving from a large medical center teaching facility with all its resources and knowledge about the medical world of scientific lectures to a struggling, self-taught P. person whose real expertise was in creating news releases and brochures. As good as I might have been with the camera, I never mastered the nuances of medical graphs using Y and X axis, nor how to display them appropriately for his lectures. Patiently he returned with each blotched offering and explained what he needed. I would try again and somewhere in the middle we came together.

One of the few personal conversations I ever had with Dr. Haq at that time was when I was admiring his achievements and saying how much his family must be proud of him. He responded that in India, physicians are not held in such high esteem as the western world. There everyone is acknowledged and equal, whether their profession is as a doctor, engineer, teacher or even service worker. It was a strange concept to me, especially after being around so many physicians whose personalities (some would say egos) were as varied and large as their practice. But even then he exuded a sense of graciousness that has never gone away.

Dixie was already depending on him for all her patient’s oncology needs. They created quite a team and a genuine confidence existed between the two—obvious and reassuring to patients. I’ll never forget the time we opened The Rose when Dixie started our first support group. Dr. Haq was one of our first official speakers at that tiny facility. Remember it was only 988 sq ft and 500 of those feet were used for equipment and services. Twenty women crammed into the tiny reception area and Dr. Haq began his presentation. He projected his slides against an almost white wall which only distorted the images a little. The real trick was he had to arrange the projector on one side of a huge concrete column while he stood on the other. This column was positioned dead center of the room, partially blocking the viewing for most of the audience. I watched as people swayed from right to left, watching one side of the slide then moving to the other, trying to capture the full image as Dr. Haq lectured. Every soul in that room was totally absorbed in his words and his explanations.

Even after all these years, I still remember one thing he said about chemotherapy. He likened it to using “an atomic bomb to get rid of a gnat.” His tone was apologetic and sincere as he explained that chemotherapy was the best medicine had to offer right now and until there was a better treatment, it had to be used. The women in the room, heads bald, mouths plagued with sores, tired beyond tired, totally understood what he meant. When he finished, the women would crowd around asking questions, seeking advice. He took time to answer each one, even though it meant staying until late into the night.

Throughout the years, Dr. Haq remained our physician to turn to. He was the first physician who is was willing to take care of our uninsured women at no charge and helped us to establish the Physicians Network, now over 500 healthcare providers strong. It is difficult to fully appreciate what it means for him to ‘accept’ a patient into care knowing there won’t be reimbursement. Besides providing a staff to administer chemotherapy, he is committed to her for the full course of treatment—usually five years.

Later he headed up our Emergency Treatment Fund, developing the protocol and criteria for using donated funds to care for women who needed treatment but couldn’t qualify for any state or local program. He painstakingly reviewed every chart and every application, ever mindful of determining what treatment regime was right for the patient as well as what could give her the best chance for survival -- all within our very limited budget.

Colleagues refer to him as the “doctor to the doctors,” and his staff will tell you of his generosity, compassion, intelligence, and humility. (He’ll deny this but I have heard that he makes house calls.) His volunteer contributions to the community, his quiet behind-the-scenes work supporting worthy causes is legendary. Recently he started his own primary clinic, the Shifa Clinic on Highway 3 in Clear Lake to serve the needs of a broader and diverse clientele.

He has always had an eye and love for research and I believe that someday his theories will prove correct and bring revolutionary changes to cancer treatment.

Of all the stories I could share about Dr. Haq, perhaps the one I love best is the tradition he had at his office for the longest time-maybe it continues today. Whenever a breast cancer patient finishes her last chemotherapy, she is presented with a beautiful rose.

Their ‘thorny’ time is over and with their rose comes celebration and love.

“In Motion” Is Right -- Day 21 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-11-06T05:27:00.000-08:00

The tagline reads: “In motion against breast cancer.”

That’s a perfect description of the Pink Ribbons Project and its Survivor Founder Susan Rafte. These days, it’s not unusual to see Susan enter the room, talking intently with an invisible someone but with no phone in sight. And then the ear piece is more evident and you realize she’s closing a conversation about one project as she’s arriving to discuss another.

She’s petite, agile, and possesses a simple elegance … even when she’s in a pair of jeans. She has some of the best shoes—especially her cowgirl boots--that one could ever imagine! Her mind never seems to stop connecting the dots and she’s constantly generating ideas for networking and new ways to draw attention to breast cancer.

Multi-tasking is a way of life for this co-creator of the arts-based organization that not only raises funds for breast cancer groups like The Rose but also provides survivors and their family members a chance to express themselves through the arts.

I’ve known Susan for years – we’ve worked on various projects together since Pink Ribbons Project’s beginnings back in 1998 when they first became supporters of The Rose. Today we share responsibilities as board members of the Breast Health Collaborative of Texas. She’s a great supporter of The Rose. And she is also a survivor. She was diagnosed in 1995.

The story of Susan and her sister Jane Weiner is now legendary. Wanting to do something, Jane and her friends danced. That dance created funds that eventually supported testimony for FDA approval of new drugs which would in fact be the drugs that would save Susan’s life. It is an extraordinary story and one that continues to impact our community.

Throughout the years, Jane and Susan’s fundraising efforts have included more dance -- aka “Pink at the Brown,” an incredible production at the Wortham Theater which even warranted attendance by President Bush and wife Barbara. Their Tour de Pink is a one-of-a-kind ride and Pink Platters features specially created plates displayed at only the finest restaurants. They even gave us a bit of “Broadway” when they brought “Bald in the Land of Big Hair” to a Houston stage.

All this fun has raised a lot of funds! The proceeds have covered the costs of expensive mammography equipment, including our most recent needs for digital equipment and superior ultrasound systems as well as partially funding one of the Mobile Mammography units. Many of the dollars raised have gone directly to patient care. In fact, for the longest time, it was Pink Ribbons’ contributions that allowed for services for some of our women who truly fell between the cracks.

Of all the events we’ve collaborated on, the most recent has been one of the most well-received and special to our patients. Giving our clients a special treat each first Tuesday of the month, area artists offer a day of instruction to those waiting for their screenings at The Rose Galleria. Pink Ribbons provides the funds to cover the costs of not only the day of art but also the needs of any sponsored patients that come in those days.

We transform the conference room adjacent to the waiting area into our own little art studio. Then paintings, jewelry, needlework, sculptures, and three-dimensional cards emerge as both women and men (lots of husbands) express their creative sides … or at least enjoy the coffee and homemade cupcakes made by our staff!

When one of the women holds up her creation for all to see, it’s easy to understand why Susan has devoted so much of her apparently never-ending energies to encouraging the use of the arts as therapy. The pride is there. The joy is there. And for a few moments, fears about health are pushed aside and a new creation is celebrated.

Those “Pink Days at The Rose” are great illustrations of what I imagine the inside of Susan’s brain must look like – creative, constant chatter, and a little bit of chaos all combined!

Even Pink Ribbons Project’s new executive director Loubel Cruz Galik has gotten in on the action of Pink Days. Her infectious smile was wide the day she dropped by to check on how it was going and wound up staying for a little creative expression of her own!

With Loubel now at the helm of Pink Ribbons Project, you might think that Susan would slow down but that would only be true if you didn’t know Susan. Those of us who have seen her in motion, know there’s no stopping her.

And The Rose … as well as the other local breast cancer organizations who benefit from Pink Ribbons Project regularly … are grateful!

(Click here for more information on Pink Ribbons Project.)

A Pink Goat, Yes, Really -- Day 20 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-11-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

I was in Canada when Palmer McInnis first made history with The Rose. Board member Bob Domec had left a message on my phone, talking so fast I almost couldn’t make out what he was saying.

“Did you hear about the heifer? Palmer’s heifer was covered in pink ribbons! The auction brought $11,000!”

Heifer? Auction? I was totally confused and it was several hours before I learned the whole story.

The year was 2005. Palmer was 16 years old and an avid FFA participant having brought many animals to the Pasadena Livestock Show and Rodeo for showing and auction. This year, his stepmother, Carla, was losing her battle against breast cancer. Palmers Dad and Stepmother ran their own company and times had been tough. They didn’t have insurance and when she needed help, The Rose was there.

Carla was in ICU when Palmer showed his prized heifer and his decision to donate whatever money it brought during the auction to The Rose was pretty incredible. You have to understand that these young people usually apply their “winnings” to their college costs. In Palmer’s mind, that money was better used by The Rose to help more women like his stepmother.

Fast forward to the fall of 2006.

While I wasn’t at the Livestock Show, I’ve heard many versions of the event –- an event that will go down in history, not just for The Rose but also for Pasadena and Deer Park.

Imagine with me the sequence of events.

Carla died not long after the donation from the heifer auction, and things got pretty tough for the McInnis family. His dad was in major grief, work was sparse, and the boys (Palmer and his brother) pretty much held the family together. He didn’t have money to raise, feed and care for another heifer, in fact he didn’t do a lot of things that year that his Senior buddies were doing. It all boiled down to a matter of money.

Palmer is an incredibly handsome young man, with a modest-almost “aw shucks” approach and response to any praise. But it is his sweet and generous nature that sets him apart from a lot of young people. So that year, in spite of all, he didn’t give up. He raised a goat, a plain simple goat. He named the goat Poncho and on the day of the Livestock Show and Rodeo, he spray painted it a bright pink color! (Folks often ask if that hurt the goat—the answer is no; it washed off easily.)

His was an eighth place goat, not even in the running for any top awards and certainly not a candidate for earning much money from the auction. In fact, if it brought $1,000 it would be lucky. But, undaunted, Palmer put a big pink ribbon around that little goat’s neck, and pulled his pink package into the ring. He announced that whatever he raised from the auction would go to The Rose.

The auctioneer knew of Palmer’s story, his family’s loss, the way his winnings would go to The Rose and how Palmer’s heifer meant $11,000 to The Rose the year before. The auctioneer called for the first bid.

Joe and Debbie Chambers, owners of “U Pick U Pull” Auto Parts in Pasadena started the bidding at $11,000!

The normal bidding continued until the bid reached $50,000—which Joe and Debbie Chambers paid. At that point, Bob Domec approached the auctioneer and told him Palmer’s dad had raised another $10,000 and Casa Ole’ was donating an additional $5,000 … that’s when everyone got in on the action.

Someone shouted, “I’ll add $5,000!”

Another yelled, “Make that $10,000!”

In seconds, the crowd was going wild, clapping and screaming as the total grew. The frenzy was incredible.

The final figure came to $115,000.

Everyone was screaming and hugging. Folks from The Rose were jumping up and down! I still get chills remembering Brahana (our center director) tell me that she looked out over the crowd and saw grown men -- cowboys in their boots and hats—openly crying.

It was a moment never before experienced in that convention center and most likely will never be recreated again.

Palmer beamed brighter than ever as he held on to Poncho -- which was given back to him. Palmer’s story was picked up by every news station, and he was interviewed over and over by the local media. His answer to “Why would you do this? Why would give up you college money and be so generous to The Rose?” was always the same.

He’d smile and say, “It was the right thing to do. All those women at The Rose could be helped.”

We nominated Palmer for the Yoplait Champion National award, which he won hands down and resulted in yet another gift of $1000 to The Rose.

It took months to “come down” from the excitement of that event and gift. Then, just when we were ready to move to yet another chapter in the life of The Rose, an interesting proposition was posed to The Board.

Why couldn’t we start a Pink Goat Society? It would be a way to reserve that $115,000 in a significant way and build upon it. The concept was simple: anyone who gave a $1000 (or more) donation to The Rose could be a Pink Goat and be part of a very elite group of people. We hired Rae Sinor to run the program and had tons of fun coming up with events, special gifts and ways to recognize our Pink Goats. Radio star and Houston legend, Dana Tyson, even participated in the goat milking contest at the Houston Livestock Show as a way of participating in our Pink Goat Society. She came in second but it was great publicity for our group.

By the end of the first year, we went from 13 individuals who had given single gifts of $1000 to The Rose over the past few years to 80 people. $80,000 plus $115,000 plus $11,000 wow that was a lot of money! The Pink Goat Society was a huge success and left us with such a legacy.

What a difference this young man made when he decided to do something special in memory of a woman who meant a lot to his life.

What a difference in The Rose’s life and the life of the women we served.

PS. Those folks that recognized Palmer had in fact “given away” his college tuition rounded up more folks and before we knew it, a Golf Tournament came about, raising lots of money to help offset some of his college costs. Palmer is still in school and is still making a difference in the world.

Poncho eventually went to Dixie’s ranch where he lived out his short, but famous, life.

Shrimp, Goats, Bikes, Boards & Parachutes (continued)-- Day 19 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-11-04T15:00:00.000-07:00

Recently I got “up close and personal” with another of our newer fundraisers – the Jump for The Rose led by the courageous Marian Sparks. Marian, like many, found herself without insurance after a divorce but jumped at the chance to have a “free mammogram” through a screening program at San Jacinto Hospital in Baytown.

When her mammogram indicated there was a problem, she was given a sheet of paper showing different places she could go next -- one was The Rose. Later, when Marian presented her first Jump for The Rose check, she told a small group of us, “I had never heard of The Rose before but I liked the sound of the name.” She went on to say, “I didn’t know what to expect but when I came into the building I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this place is huge! And, just as I’d been told, it’s beautiful. Even so, everything was so scary. If I had ever had any idea that I would be seen by Dr. Melillo who would later also be my surgeon, I would have known right away I was in good hands. I was treated with such kindness and nobody knew I didn’t have insurance.”

Tears filled my eyes hearing her words confirming what we try to do day in and day out.

After the biopsy, Dixie told Marian the news. Yes she did have breast cancer, but the good news was it was very small. Marian knew she was at high risk, being the daughter of a breast cancer survivor who had undergone a double mastectomy. She began juggling all the questions involved in finding help and supporting herself. A victim of Hurricane Ike with a house still in need of repairs, now cancer was one more obstacle. Most of all, she was worried about how she would take care of herself and most of all how she would pay for the chemotherapy.

That was when Dixie told Marian that The Rose was going to take care of her.

Marian has a hard time taking this in. “I can’t believe you are going to do this for me,” she said.

Dixie responded, “Why do you think I started this place?”

Marian was stunned, “You started this place?"

Dixie smiled, “Yes with another woman. I got tired of women coming to me with breast cancer and I couldn’t help.” She went on to explain that as a non-profit organization, people raise money for The Rose, all kinds of people and corporations, plus grants.

Marian hugged Dixie and said, “Dr. Melillo when I get well, I’m going to raise money for you and The Rose.”

The idea of having a fundraiser started then and there. You see, before Marian was divorced, uninsured and battling breast cancer, she was an avid skydiver—chalking up over 800 dives. She had found a way to fund her passion by getting a Coach rating and teaching. She even ran a small restaurant as another way to have money to jump with a friend from a Four Way Team which eventually went to National Competition.

As a way to give back, this remarkable and courageous soul started Jump for The Rose -- a skydiving event that has since established itself as a 501c (3) -- and, after only two years, raised nearly $25,000.

I attend as many events as I can. Walking through the crowds, meeting the women we’ve helped, hearing the stories of family members is inspiring. Once upon a time I heard almost every story there was to hear at The Rose because the “administrative office” was separated from the “clinical department” by only a bookcase! I miss that direct contact with our patients and am glad for the opportunities when they come along these days.

When Marian told us about this year’s event, I casually mentioned that I have always wanted to skydive. “Why don’t you?” she asked. “Come out and do a tandem jump!” She was elated.

Unfortunately, when the day of the jump came around so did some clouds and a tandem jump was ruled out for the day. The weather didn’t stop the experienced folks though and Marian and her crew set a new state record skydive consisting of 27 women performing three separate, intricate formations in a single skydive.

After seeing that feat, I planned on redeeming that rain check ASAP … and did … the very next week!

We were out at Skydive Spaceland early on an October Saturday. I donned the jumpsuit and heard the instructions, at least most of them. I will admit to being a bit awe struck at what I was about to do. Soon enough we were walking toward the small craft that would take us up. And then, secured to my new best friend, Matt, I stood in that open door, looking down at nothing between me and the earth below.

We jumped and those first few seconds were exhilarating as we plunged downward with incredible speed. It was amazing and before I knew it hands where holding my arm as Marian and her friends connected to me in yet another formation. And then it happened.

Matt pulled the cord and with a jerk, we were thrust upward and just as suddenly we were floating. It was so quiet and peaceful. I could see the bay of Galveston, the countryside and the sun just high enough in the sky to cast a golden glow on everything it touched.

The metaphor wasn’t lost on me. While this experience was the first time I had done it out of a perfectly good airplane, I’d made my Jump for The Rose 25 years ago. What a ride that has been—mostly exhilarating--sometimes jerked this way and that. Often wondering where our next funding source to care for our clients might come from. But in the end, in tandem with people who believe in our mission, at peace and taking in every incredible second of the ride.

To see Dorothy's tandem Jump for The Rose, click here.

Shrimp, Goats, Bikes, Boards & Parachutes-- Day 18 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-11-03T19:19:00.000-07:00

I marvel at the myriad of ways supporters of The Rose have raised money through the years. I already told you about the Bachelors’ Auctions that the Soroptimists did for us. Perhaps that should have been a sign of things to come? And then there were the Shrimp Boils – which I’ve also mentioned in previous posts. The 22 Shrimp Boils we’ve had thus far have raised more than $750,000 by the way. That’s a lot of shrimp!

We’ve had horse shows and golf tournaments, fashion shows and parties in homes, young people skimming across water and even a pink goat (that story is coming soon). Quilters quilt for us and cyclists ride in the Pink Ribbons Project annual Tour de Pink.

Recently (as in the last three years) Bikers Against Breast Cancer offered a whole new audience the chance to help out our uninsured women. The 2011 ride saw more than 500 riders, volunteers and supporters set a record and bring us close to $100,000 raised thus far.

D’Etta Casto-DeLeon has led the team since the beginning. She’s one gorgeous lady and the way she convinces people to volunteer year after year is amazing! They start planning early and I enjoy hearing the laughter coming out of the conference room as this totally volunteer group puts in 100+ hours to ensure that the event is safe and successful.

Ask D’Etta why she commits so much time and energy organizing the BABC, and she’ll tell you: “You mean beside the fact that I am a control freak and refuse to let it go and only want to see it get bigger and better???“ You gotta love D’Etta’s perspective!

(However, press her a little bit and she will reveal that her grandmother has breast cancer and her children’s grandmother passed away from the disease. Breast cancer has been an unwelcomed part of her life.)

She then added, “I continue because I see true results and know what we, the BABC Committee, accomplish. I know where the money is going, and I know that it stays local … that makes it worth it. Of course, the hidden joy is when I have people come up to me and thank me for what I do, then tell me their story of how The Rose has helped them.”

Every event has been glorious. All those bikers and their bikes revving up—the sounds of their engines filling the air. Dixie even bought a bike and she and her friend, Todd, lead the pack as the biker after biker pulls out of San Jacinto Harley Davidson parking lot in Pasadena. For as far as one can see the line of bikers stretches into the horizon—for miles. Many of the riders are survivors; many are riding for someone who did not survive. Another reminder … breast cancer touches us all.

Another fundraiser that’s made quite a “splash” with us, is Skim Jam put on by the group Skim2Live. Carey Seyler started Skim2Live in 2008 in honor of his mother, Debi, who had passed away from breast cancer when Carey was only 9 years old. The event features skimboarders competing and demonstrating their techniques of what is essentially surfing in shallow water. Carey was a teenager when he started the group with friends. After bringing us a $250 check in 2008, those incredibly dedicated youth have raised more than $13,000!

I’ll never forget the day when Carey, now a college student at UT in San Antonio, asked to talk to me about running a real non-profit. He was our summer intern working in the Development Department. He asked all the right questions and I know that this compassionate and hard-working young man will be someone who will make the world a better place.

To be continued ...

Fresh Tears-- Day 17 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-11-02T13:47:00.000-07:00

Throughout the history of the Rose, many stories have made me cry but none quite like Vicky’s.

I had known Vicky for several years primarily through the Federation of Houston Professional Women. Our first introduction was through her good friend, Myrleen Knott, who would later join our board and become our Chair. Vicky was busy coordinating some part of the Federation’s Women of Excellence Award Event and as I would soon learn, she was always involved in some aspect of promoting women and women’s business. Every year, member organizations of the Federation, such as American Business Women’s Association, the Soroptimists, Women in Finance, Texas Executive Women -- the list included over 40 organizations from throughout Harris County -- selected a Woman of Excellence who was recognized at an elaborate banquet.

The year when everything changed, I had been involved in a Federation Committee and ran into Vicky a couple of times. The Women of Excellence event came and, of course, we visited there. I look back and now know I should have picked it up on the signs then. She, offhandedly, said she needed to come to The Rose for a mammogram. I don’t remember my response, except that it was something like, “Just call the office” and I told her we could probably work her in soon.

A couple of months passed. She and Mryleen were launching a new ABWA chapter in Clear Lake, much closer to my office, and invited me to their initial recruitment meeting. I don’t remember much about the lunch. I only remember Vicky sitting at the reception table, greeting everyone as they entered, chattering away about the new Chapter—her smile ever present.

Then she saw me and almost immediately after saying hi, she said something about needing to call for a mammogram. Again.

Something cold went over me. I paused and really looked at her. She was staring down at the RSVP list the pen in her hand hovered over pieces of paper.

“Vicky?’ I asked, “Is there something going on?”

Not exactly the most diplomatic question, considering the crowd streaming by.

She met my eyes and said, “Yes.”

She paused, “It has been a couple of months.”

“And you didn’t call us??” I asked incredulously.

“I wanted to wait until I had the money,” she explained adding that her husband had been laid off, and they didn’t have insurance.

I was confused. I understood her words but I couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t called us. At the same time, my mind had sped ahead to wondering how soon we could get her in and I reached for the phone to call Brahana, our Center Director. She stopped me, “I promise I’ll call. Honest, just let me finish this luncheon.”

“Are you absolutely sure? I’ll check when I get back to the office. I know we can get you in soon.”

I don’t remember much more of that day.

Within a week or so, Vicky came for her appointment, but she refused to accept financial assistance, insisting on paying out her diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound work-up. By the time we got her to biopsy, it was obvious that she would need to go through one of our programs.

Vicky’s cancer wasn’t small, its location was not good, an aggressive tumor that would need equally aggressive treatment.

After it was all said and done, Vicky qualified for the State program. She did from the very beginning.

She began her treatment, had surgery and with every step forward, came a step backward. She had waited too long. At the height of her treatment, her husband was diagnosed with cancer as well. Months later, he lost his battle. We now know that Vicky will be on chemotherapy for the rest of her life.

Through all this she never lost her smile, her zest for life, her kind ways or her willingness to be the “support” for anyone else diagnosed with cancer. She is the first we call to talk to another newly diagnosed, the first to volunteer for any event, and the first to share her story. She is amazing.

One day Vicky tried to explain her reluctance to use the sponsorship program.

Asking for help was not something she wanted to do...accepting help was harder. Even with a family history (her mother was a breast cancer survivor), even with all her awareness about breast cancer, and, as importantly, even with her almost intimate knowledge about The Rose and its programs, she said, “I didn't want to take a spot of someone else who might need the help more.”

Vicky exemplifies the women we serve. She is the face of the women who, though employed, don't earn enough money to be afford insurance. Women who are not used to asking for charity. Proud women, women who are accustomed to paying their own way.

Back in the early days of The Rose, we heard stories like Vicky’s all the time. But this wasn’t 1986. Hadn’t we come further than this? Couldn’t we stop this from happening?

Realizing why Vicky had put off making an appointment weighed heavy on my heart. So when the pathology returned, confirming the extent of her cancer, I cried.

For a long time, I cried.

This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.

© 2011 Dorothy Gibbons. All rights reserved.

Doctors in the House -- Day 16 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-11-01T15:23:00.000-07:00

Visitors to The Rose -- either the Featherwood or Galleria location – often comment about the beauty of the facilities or how bright and cheerful they seem. And they are … except where the doctors reside.

The small offices where they read mammograms are dark, very dark. They have to be. Backlit light stands for films and large computer screens for the digital images are best utilized in the dark.

That lack of light poses a stark contrast to the men staring at those screens. The Rose is fortunate to currently have two fulltime radiologists on staff, allowing us to provide a speedy response to the woman who may be stressing about what the doctor will find. Not every cancer center in the Houston area has on-site dedicated physicians. We’ve had them for quite a while.

Dr. Ward Parsons came to us in July 2003. Dr. Parsons is an internationally known educator in Breast Imaging. Since 1992 he has been a regular speaker at Dr. Laszlo Tabar's Advanced Screening and Diagnostic Mammography Courses in the U.S., Canada, and overseas. And that’s where Amy Rigsby (you’ve read her story already) found him.

In typical Amy style, after one of his workshops she said, “Some day you’re going to come work at The Rose.”

When she told me this, my thought was “Yeah right. A world-renowned educator is going to join our little staff.”

Amy kept saying it, every year, every conference. Then when we were ready to hire for a fulltime position, she did it again. At this point, Dr. Parsons who had been in academia had left the classroom for private practice. Surprisingly, he came down for an interview.

Even though Amy had always described Dr. P. as a “big teddy bear,” I still remember the day he stepped into my office—all 6 feet 4 inches of him. My first thought was “That man? In our little bitty rooms? How are we going to get this to work?”

He knew what I was thinking by the look on my face, I’m sure. Because he told me, “Whenever I do an ultrasound on a woman, and I like to do my own, I come in and sit down and now I’m eye to eye with her. Because I know it’s scary to them and I don’t want to do a thing to add to their stress.”

Dr. Parsons did turn out to have a teddy bear personality, he’s all heart and he even has a collection (more like a menagerie) of stuffed animals. He brought so many positive changes to The Rose that it would be difficult to list them all.

At the top of the list though has to be his insisting on separating screening from diagnostic services so that every woman who had a diagnostic examination would know her results that day. He could not abide by the “old” system of having a woman wait for results, so his first change was one that immediately brought our services to a higher level. Eight years ago that was a big deal and a system not many used. I was always amazed at the number of women who made a point to tell me that the doctor at The Rose actually took the time to explain their results that same day—something they felt was pretty incredible—which it still is today.

As you might suspect, of our current 90 employees, the majority of them are women. In fact, we only have three men. One of them is Dr. Parsons, the other Jerry McGee, our IT manager, and man number three is Dr. Daniel Roubein who came to us in 2009. But if our headhunter at the time had followed her gut, and he hadn’t been listening, we might have missed having another great guy on our team.

We knew when we opened the Rose Galleria that we would have to have a fulltime on-site doctor at that location as well. Opening the Galleria was actually a result of outgrowing our Joan Gordon Center on Bissonnet. The relocation to the Galleria area meant we could double our physical capacity, equipment capacity, staff capacity, and now we had to increase our physician capacity. We had just enough funding to started looking for part-time but none of the resumes we were getting from the headhunter seemed right.

Then one day she called and asked, “I want to know if you will talk with someone who has his own neuroradiology business.”

Once again, my reaction was in the category of “yeah right.” I couldn’t imagine why the founder and president of Radiology Reading Centers of America, who had been practicing radiology for 18 years, would want to work at a part-time position.

But Dr. Roubein came for the interview. He was all business yet his passion for mammography was pretty obvious. Our agreement was struck and the first time he met with the Board of Directors over lunch, I described the recruiting process as I understood it had transpired.

That’s when he said, “That’s not how it went.”

He continued: “The headhunter called me about another job, a neuroradiology job. I told her no because I have all I want to do with that with my company. Then I asked if she had anything else? She listed a few then added, ‘there is just a little bitty job for a part-time mammographer. That’s ALL they do.’”

Dr. Roubein said that’s when he told her he’d really like to explore the position with The Rose. Seems that for 15 years he was the lead mammographer for Beaumont and really wanted to get back to it -- just not in a hospital.

As he told the story, goose bumps traveled over me. “What if he had not asked?” I thought, amazed once again at how people are brought to The Rose.

Now fulltime with The Rose, Dr. Roubein has made a place for himself in our Galleria location. He incorporated his high standards of care into his work with us. The staff reports that corny jokes and compassion are what this dedicated family man, father of three boys, also brings to his job. Always respectful, he is noted for being “patient with his patients.” He takes the time to ensure the Veteran knows she or he is appreciated for their service to our country and he brings a special sense of spiritually to his care that is so appreciated by the women we navigate into treatment.

Recently, TV personality, Deborah Duncan, sat in that small dark room with him and interviewed him for a spot on Great Day Houston. He spoke of the technological advances that brought him to The Rose and the level of care we are able to provide because of our on-site physicians. Deborah, like many of our other clients, jokingly reported that she’d fallen in love.

The staff wasn’t surprised. “All the patients fall in love with him,” they reported. “They want to kiss him … and sometimes … they do!”

Doctors that care do make the difference.

This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.

© 2011 Dorothy Gibbons. All rights reserved.

Carolyn and the Cancer Fighters -- Day 15 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-31T13:52:00.000-07:00

Dixie rarely had the desire to go to evening meetings, especially if they were in Houston.

“I’ve lived all over the United States and in some foreign countries, I’ve done all the traveling I want to do.” She’d retort when I would try and convince her that driving from Pasadena to Houston wasn’t exactly like driving to the next state.

So I was really surprised when she called me all excited about attending a Monday night Texas Executive Women’s meeting. Seems she had discovered that Carolyn Farb was going to be the guest speaker, and Dixie was determined to meet this lady.

“Something tells me she could be important to The Rose,” She said. All the way over to the meeting she kept affirming that we’d get to meet Carolyn. Dixie believed in affirmations.

“If I can just get two minutes with her,” Dixie spoke her desire aloud and her enthusiasm was contagious. “I know I can convince her. She just needs to hear about what we are doing. She’ll be excited about helping us.”

In 1988, we sure needed someone to be excited about helping us. The first Rose Center had opened but all our big dreams seemed light years away. The landlord had booted us out of the first “free” space and begrudgingly shuffled us into another. My time was gobbled up between work at the hospital and the administrative stuff like payroll, reconciling bank statements and publicity for the Center. I was also fielding the day-to-day questions and occasional crisis of finding a new tech or machines breaking down. Spare time was non-existent and writing grants was hit or miss. Everyday was a struggle.

The final straw came when we were forced to move once again and finally signed a formal lease. Now we had a five-year commitment hanging over our heads.

We needed a champion -- someone who could help us with fundraising, someone who had connections … someone like Carolyn Farb. Her name appeared regularly in the society pages and any charity event listing her as chair was a guaranteed success.

So we showed up at the meeting and the TEW members made a big fuss over Dixie, introducing her to the crowd as one of their first Women on the Move.

We were sitting in the front row as Carolyn gave her talk, full of the dos and don’ts for fund raising. Her style and delivery exuded pure confidence. When she did make eye contact it was deliberate and focused. Her words were concise and to the point. Her gleaming white designer suit wrapped perfectly around her petite, slender frame and set off her long blond hair. Occasionally she would use her hands to accent points in her talk, but for the most part her gestures appeared controlled and small.

When she finished, the meeting was officially closed but folks continued to mingle. Dixie was primed. We waited until the waters of people parted from around Carolyn. I gave Dixie a little push. Suddenly Dixie was face to face with her, towering over Carolyn, Dixie’s high heels making her even taller.

I held my breath watching as Dixie launched into her spiel. She truly was going full speed ahead at this point. No breaths and nonstop.

“Hi, I’m Dixie Melillo and that was a wonderful speech. Everything you said about raising money is exactly what we needed to hear. We’ve started the Rose, Dorothy and I,” she motioned at me, “It’s a non-profit, and we’re providing free mammograms to women who don’t have insurance. You cannot imagine how many women there are who need help. Breast cancer is a big issue and women just can’t afford mammograms. We sure could us your help. We just need some guidance about what we should do next.”

At that point, Carolyn glanced over her left shoulder and then … turned and walked away. She never changed the expression on her face, never acknowledged Dixie, never said a word.

Dixie stood silently with her mouth open. I was equally shocked. Several of the women were starting to gather around us, and soon Dixie regained her composure and became her usual friendly self. Before long we were making our way down the road for that long journey back to her office in Pasadena. It was late; we were tired. We didn’t talk much. An oddity for us

Two years later, Dixie got a call at her office.

“Dixie,” the voice had a cultured quality to it and there was no mistaking that Carolyn Farb was on the line. “I’ve been thinking about what we were talking about and I want you to meet the Cancer Fighters. They’ve received a special bequest from a member’s estate, and I think there could be an interest in The Rose.”

Carolyn paused, and then continued, “I don’t have time to talk now. I just wanted to give you a quick call and see if you’d check your calendar. When would be a good time for you? I want to set up a meeting between you and their president.”

So began our relationship with Carolyn that would ultimately span over the next decade and include a dozen different types of encounters and events.

We’ve learned that the universe seems to have its own time schedule. We keep reminding each other that some things aren’t meant to be, and we just have to be patient.

Fortunately, meeting with the Cancer Fighters was one of those “meant to be things.” Joan Gordon, a founding member of the group, had left $10,000 in her will for a special and meaningful project. The Board and members were researching options on where the money could do the most good when Dr. D. Jane Taylor and Carolyn Farb came to them with a suggestion: The Rose.

They met. They talked. They voted.

Soon an empty shell in a strip shopping center had carpet, drapes, chairs, medical equipment, office furnishings and supplies and The Rose’s Joan Gordon Center was a reality.

Linda Strevell was the President of the Cancer Fighters at that time and orchestrated many events for us, helped raised money, and served as an office volunteer. Linda recently shared memories of those early days:

I was at the front desk one afternoon when a young mother came through the door with her two children. She settled them in the reception area and with a concerned look on her face came to the counter. Several months earlier she had found a lump in her breast and, with very little money to spend, went to see a doctor. He told her to “watch” the lump and come back to see him in six months. After hearing about The Rose and its mission from a friend, she came to the Joan Gordon location.

This woman was very upset, stressed out over her situation and worried that she had breast cancer. When she completed her story, I simply told her, “If your doctor had a lump on his penis you could be sure that he would not ‘watch it’ for six months. With “Director Dorothy” screeching in the background, I was undeterred.

I was subsequently moved to the back office area where my tongue was held in check. After a while, I was once again allowed to serve at the Front Desk.

One day a gentleman came in with his wife, she filled out a form and was taken into the screening area. I looked over at him and he smiled and told me that his wife was very hungry, but he had informed her that she could not eat prior to a mammogram.

On the way to the appointment they stopped for fast food and he said as soon as she came out he had the sack right there for her. I couldn’t help but think, “Ahhh…True Love.”

Eventually, we moved from Stella Link to Bissonnet and now have a beautiful facility on the third floor of the Foundation Surgical Hospital near I59 and I610. When giving tours there, I tell the story of Joan Gordon and the Cancer Fighters. And I say another silent “thank you” to Carolyn Farb.

This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.

© 2011 Dorothy Gibbons. All rights reserved.

Let’s Talk About Amy -- Day 14 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

Some people you know you’re going to like even before you meet them. Amy was one of those for me.

Everything on her resume was exactly what we needed. She ran a mammogram center which had about the same volume as ours, she was registered in mammography and the list of her volunteer activities was long and impressive. After spending seven years as assistant director of human resources (back then we called it Personnel) at the hospital, I knew how to read resumes and spot the patterns. Hers was flawless and to top it off her middle name was Rose. That had to be a good omen. The only problem was she lived in Longview (about 4 hours north of town) and she wouldn’t be available for two months.

She explained during a telephone interview that she was getting married in April and would be moving to Houston to live with her new hubby. Two months seemed a long way off especially since I only had two techs on board, juggling the three machines and two centers. We needed someone now, but, for whatever reason, I agreed to meet her the next Saturday she came to town. More than 20 years later, am I ever glad I waited.

From the sound of her voice and the way she spoke, I fully expected to meet a young, petite blonde who fulfilled the stereotype of being just a wee bit of an airhead.

While Amy (far right in photo) did turn out to be small (weren’t we all back then?), she was the same age as me and had thick black hair. So much for my blond theory. The idea of airhead was also pretty much expelled, except she did talk a lot. She still does. Amy can talk about anything and everything, seldom coming up for air.

I remember one time we had gone to an out of town conference and were sharing a hotel room. After a long day, we were snug in our separate beds around 9 PM, and I was ready to call it a day. We had talked all day, first during the three-hour plane ride, then throughout the registration and as we walked through the exhibit hall, and finally into the evening over dinner. We had a great visit, discussing everything from work to husbands to kids to dreams to The Rose.

I rolled over and turned out the lights. Amy kept talking, four hours later she was still talking. I woke up early the next morning and carefully slipped out of bed, trying to be quiet so as not to wake her. I had just cleared the end of the bed when suddenly she sat straight up and started talking picking up right at the point I had fallen asleep the night before.

When I hired her, Amy really didn’t want to be the technical supervisor; she’d done her stint at supervision. She didn’t want to help with the support group; she’d gotten too close to the patients in the one she ran in Longview. She didn’t want to be on any committees. She just wanted to be a tech, do the work, and go home to her new life. However, natural leaders always emerge and take charge. Once a boss, always bossy and Amy was that, in the nicest of ways.

Almost immediately, Amy took over the annual state inspections. Mammogram centers had just started being accredited and there were lots of questions that had not been answered about documentation. So every possible piece of paper that we thought could be needed, reviewed, signed or stamped was gathered and put in order to be ready for the inspector.

The first time I went through an inspection with Amy, we worked till 3 o’clock in the morning, reviewing and readying our paperwork.

Now I didn’t personally witness what happened that next day but it was verified by more than one person who was looking out the window while eating breakfast at Alfred’s, the restaurant located across the parking lot from our center. The tale also made the rounds among those at the State inspection office and was once labeled the most unbelievable inspection in the history of mammography.

Amy was running a little late that morning. The inspector had already arrived and was waiting in his car away from the Center door when the noise behind him made him check his rearview mirror. A huge blue van was coming at him. The van was turning a bit too sharply and appeared to be balancing on two wheels. He held his breath as the van careened, righted itself, and narrowly missed the bumper of his car.

Of course, Amy was driving the van.

She screeched to a stop, bumping the van’s front end against the curb. She swung the door open, jumped out, then opened the van’s back door and jumped back in, tossing two huge bags over her shoulder. Next, she turned and started pulling at something that was behind the driver’s seat. A few more tugs and an old black purse, almost as big as the bags, popped out at her, spewing items all over the sidewalk. She snatched them up, stuffed them back into the purse and then continued digging in it. A few moments passed when she smacked one hand against her forehead, having just realized the keys she was desperately searching for were dangling from her other hand. Only then did she start moving toward the Center.

The inspector, still recovering from the near collision, had watched her arrival and decided to give her a few minutes to open up. He opened his door and was starting to get out when he noticed she had come back outside.

She vanished around the side of the van. Then she walked back into the center juggling a big box and the three-ring binders we’d created the night/morning.

Two seconds later, she was back outside and again went around to the side of the van. When she came back into view this time she was balancing a full laundry basket against one hip and a full-to-overflowing bag of groceries on the other hip. (Our washer had been on the blink so she had carried the towels home to launder, and it was support group night, hence the goodies.)

On the third trip, she was loaded down with hanging clothes and two shoe boxes, another trip in and back out.

The fourth time she emerged from the side of the van, she was bent over, holding the old IBM typewriter we’d used for our prep against her stomach. She sort of struggled forward, shuffling a bit and nearly tripped on the curb. The inspector was making a move toward her, ready to help but she had propped open the front door of the center and was inside before he could reach her. He told folks later that at this point he was a bit mesmerized by this back and forth parade.

What happened next was straight out of an espisode of “I Love Lucy.” Amy retuned and walked directly to the back of the van. She opened the doors, reached in, and pulled out an ironing board.

At the very moment the board cleared the van, the legs sprang open with a loud pop. She stumbled backwards almost falling into the approaching inspector. When he said, “Can I help you?” she screamed, swung around, and hit the inspector with the board she still held in her hands.

It was going to be a long three days.

Amy was mortified and started talking. There was a function that day, she explained hurriedly, with the Cancer Fighters. She went on to tell him who the Cancer Fighters were, how they had started the second center, how we really needed the money and how she had to go to this function. She had brought a different outfit to wear that needed to be touched up. The function wasn’t until 4 PM but with the inspection, she wouldn’t have time to go home.

She rattled on and on still holding onto ironing board. Then she spied the inspector’s bleeding arm and started apologizing. He stood there, first staring at her and then at the blood running down to his wrist.

When he finally did go inside, she insisted on doctoring the scratches. She tried her best to make him feel better by bringing him snacks in between each set of paperwork.

For some reason, the inspector took a lot of smoke breaks that day. Pity, since he said he’d almost beat that habit.

The next day, he arrived at the main office and things went from bad to worse. In the middle of inspecting the second of two machines, the light field didn’t work right. Over the years, the light field was a minor but persistent problem on this machine which had been corrected time and again by the service guys. In fact, it had been worked on the week before and was in perfect alignment, but not this day. This kind of problem wouldn’t have meant a violation, but it would have been a ding on Amy’s perfect record.

I’ll never forget her barging into my office, her face flushed, those dark eyebrows knotted together as she threw her hands on my desk, leaned forward and in a voice a little too loud said: “Remember we talked about replacing Unit 2?”

I nodded.

“Well today’s the day we get rid of it!”

“Wait, Amy. What do you mean? We haven’t raised the money for a new one. We can’t just get rid of this one.”

“Oh yes we can!” she exclaimed, her eyes flashing. “I’ve already called Ron and he’s sending his guys over to move it out.”

“What?”

“It won’t pass. That stupid light field again. So I asked the inspector, ‘What would happen if it weren’t here?’ He said he couldn’t inspect what wasn’t there. So I unplugged it and it’s out of here...TODAY!”

I sighed. There was never any arguing with Amy once her mind was made up.

When the three days of inspection finally came to an end, we gathered in my office. Amy and I sat on one side of my desk, she in a chair pulled close to the corner and the inspector sat on the other side. He spread out paperwork, made faces and tapped a sheet here or there before starting the debriefing. We held our breath. He looked up and began a long drawn out explanation of what he inspected, what the parameters were, why they were important, but the only words we heard were: “You passed!”

Simultaneously, Amy and I burst out crying and started hugging each other. (As was our usual professional approach.)

He just shook his head.

Many years later, Amy heard that this inspector was terminally ill -- lung cancer. In her normal way, she reached out to him, sending a note, telling him we had added him to our prayer list. He responded, thanked her for her kind words and teased about her about that first unforgettable visit. Just like Amy herself … unforgettable.

Amy Rigsby continues to serve as The Rose Tech Director, supervising the work of the mobile units, working with our support groups, and helping create greater breast health awareness through health fairs and … yes, talks to groups large and small.

Navigating, Empowering -- Day 13 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-29T10:01:00.000-07:00

The call came about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The American Cancer Society had referred the caller to us. We were the tenth call of her day, and she was at a pay phone with few quarters left.

She began her story.

“My name is Jerri and I’m 36 years old.” she said “I found a lump in my breast about 4 months ago. I was hoping it would go away but it didn’t, so I finally got a mammogram at the diagnostic center downtown. I heard that was what I needed to do, get a mammogram but it cost $125 so I had to wait till payday. Then they said I needed an ultrasound and that was another $250. Then they said I needed to see a surgeon and so I did, and he said I had cancer and I would need surgery. First he had to do a biopsy, and that was going to be another $1,000. Then when I had it done, it was for sure that I did have cancer. We don’t have any insurance.”

I remember thinking that in spite of having breast cancer, this woman was oddly calm. Of course, she’d repeated this story ten times during the past couple of hours so maybe she was on automatic pilot. Much later I learned of her terror.

She continued to chronicle the last few weeks. “The surgeon said he would work with us for his fee, we could pay him out. But, he also said I would have to go to the hospital to have a mastectomy, and I needed to have it done pretty quickly.

“My husband is a mechanic and makes $9 an hour. We have about $350 every two weeks to work with, but our car is broken right now. We don’t have much money. I went to the hospital and talked to the people about making payments, or doing a payment plan. They wanted a credit card, but we don’t have one. Even though we don’t make much money, we always pay our own way.

“I have a nine-year-old son and the last time I was in the hospital was when I had him. Anyway, the hospital said that we could pay it out but they needed $1250 as a down payment. So we called our relatives and finally my husband’s uncle loaned us the money. Then when I got to the hospital they wouldn’t let me have the surgery until they had another $750 down payment for the anesthesiology. My husband was frantic and started making more calls. Finally, another relative put it on a credit card.”

By now, I was enthralled with this woman’s story. I kept trying to figure out why she had called us; she had already had a mammogram, an ultrasound, and a biopsy. Those were the services I could have offered her. Maybe she was looking for a support group or information on reconstruction. I waited, listening to her words, the cantor was halting, and she had a childlike manner of speaking.

“So I had the mastectomy. That was a week ago and today I went back to see the surgeon. He said the cancer was real bad. Something about the pathology report.”

“Did you see that report?” I interrupted.

“Yes,” she said “I can read it to you.”

Before I could stop her, she had put the phone down and I heard her fumbling with papers. The sounds of traffic filled the space, horns honking, the starting and stopping of engines. When she returned, she immediately launched into reading the report, stumbling over some of the words, sounding them out. She was right, the cancer was bad.

When she finished, I simply said ok, and asked, “Then what happened?”

She continued, “The surgeon said I would need to have chemotherapy and I needed it right away. I thought the surgery was all I would need, I thought that was it. No one ever said anything about chemotherapy.” She paused.

“Yes, Jerri,” I said filling up the silence, “chemotherapy sounds like the right course of treatment.”

“He arranged for me to go see an onconologist [sic]—is that what they are called?” she asked

“Oncologist” I responded.

“This oncologist,” she said the word perfectly, “His office was just down the hall from the surgeon’s office, so the surgeon called him to arrange for me to go right over. The surgeon said I shouldn’t wait; I needed to go right then.”

I was growing uncomfortable now; the small knot forming in my stomach was sending out loud signals. Jerri had stopped talking again, I was afraid we had gotten cut off. Finally I heard a deep inhale, and she continued.

“I was in his office, the oncologist. I had taken my chart with me and he was sitting behind his desk and looking over it. He said, ’Yes this is very serious, and we have to start your chemotherapy immediately.’ I asked when. He said, ‘We’ll schedule the first treatment this Thursday and then you will need 6 to 9 more every three to four weeks.’

“How much is this going to cost?’ I asked him. He said, ‘Cost?’ I said, ‘Yes, I will have to find the money because we don’t have insurance.’ He said it was very expensive, thousands of dollars.

Now Jerri’s voice broke. I waited.

“Then he handed my chart back to me and said, ‘I can’t help you.’” Her voice cracked again.

Another pause, finally in my softest voice I asked. “He handed it back to you?”

She said yes. She didn’t remember what else was said, she was so upset. She just remembered thanking him and taking her chart. She left the office, walked outside, found the nearest pay phone and looked up hospitals listed in the yellow pages and started calling them.

“I was lucky there was a book here in the phone booth,” she said.

Lucky? I thought.

She continued, “I must have called four or five hospitals when finally someone said to call Reach to Recovery at the American Cancer Society and they were the ones that said to call The Rose.”

My mind was reeling. I knew there had to be a way to help her but first things first.

“Jerri, let’s start over. Do you have a phone at home?”

“We used to, but it’s been disconnected.”

“And your surgery was a week ago?”

“Yes, I still have the drains in.”

I almost lost it then. It was hot outside. Houston can be hot any time of year but this week in November was miserably hot. I imagined the scene at the other end of the phone line. A young woman standing at a pay phone, fighting off the heat and the fumes from the downtown traffic; feeding one coin after another into a pay phone; hoping against hope to find help, with her drains still in place.

“Jerri you are talking to Dorothy, don’t forget this name. Give me the phone number on that pay phone please.”

There was a pause and she said. “I don’t see one. It’s not on here.”

“Ok, then is your husband with you.”

“No I took the bus; he had to work today. He’s already missed too much on account of me and we need the money. I lost my job when I got sick; it was only a part time job but it was something. They didn’t need me anymore. We don’t have much money now.”

“Can you give me his work phone number?”

“I don’t know it; I never call him there."

“Where does he work?”

I could tell she was uncomfortable, she hesitated, maybe worried I would call him and he’d lose his job, so I changed my approach.

“Jerri, we will find you help but let me explain some things. We don’t do chemotherapy here at The Rose, but I will find someone who does and who can help you.”

At least I hope I will, I said silently to myself.

“I want to be sure I have a way to reach you, just in case something happens and we get cut off during this phone call.”

She understood and gave me the name of his work.

“Are you feeling well enough to stay on the line for a little while?” I asked.

She said, “Yes, I just have to be home when my son gets out of school, around four o’clock.”

It was so incredible, I almost laughed. Her priorities were absolutely clear. She had to be home by four.

I, on the other hand, had started to panic, mentally weighing the best approach and whom to call to try to get her into the public health system. Most of all, I knew I couldn’t let her hang up because I had such a bad feeling that I’d never find her again.

So I said, “No matter what Jerri, stay on this line. I’m going to put you on hold and make some calls. Do not hang up. Promise me that.”

She said okay, then she asked me, “Who are you again?”

I said “Dorothy Weston.”

She asked, “I mean what do you do there? I could call you back. I’ve already taken up so much of your time. Are you sure it’s ok for you to keep talking to me?”

I said, “It’s ok, Jerri. I’m the boss.”

That was the moment she broke down and cried. For the next ten minutes, she cried, big sobs pouring out between her saying “I’m sorry.” She cried. I talked, telling her it would be all right. She cried some more. I kept talking.

By now, I had caught the attention of one of the employees who was passing by my office, frantically I motioned for her to come into the room. While reassuring Jerri, I had found the numbers needed from my Rolodex so I scribbled notes to my employee asking her to start making the phone calls.

I glanced at my watch -- 3:15 p.m. I had been on the phone for over an hour. It was a Friday afternoon so finding someone still in their office would be a trick.

My employee returned, indicating some success.

I said to Jerri. “I want you to talk with one of my employees now, while I talk to a couple of people.”

Within the next hour, we made a dozen phone calls. First, calls to oncologists finding no help, then calls to the county hospital district and frustrating minutes of being kept on hold with the eligibility office. Then a call to the clinic assigned to her zip code. The public health folks wanted her to come in for a consultation and to have an initial screening.

“She already has breast cancer!” I almost screamed into the telephone. I gave up and went another way.

Finally, I reached Dr. Nancy Neff, at Ben Taub and she made the calls. Between about six people and as many phone calls, everything was set up. Jerri’s application for public health would be expedited and her chemotherapy started.

Initially, Jerri had difficulty understanding what we were doing. She had never accepted charity before, had always paid her own way. She didn’t understand that she could qualify for public health. I was asking a lot of questions about her finances and demographics and work history so she could be assigned to the right referring clinic, and she was suspicious of the whole process.

Finally, I explained that her doctor would take the drains out on Wednesday morning; her appointment at the clinic would be that afternoon. We had reached him and explained the situation. He hadn’t been told about the outcome of Jerri’s visit with the oncologist.

Of course, Jerri had a few other worries as well, such as having grocery money for the week. They had used every penny from their savings for the diagnostic work-up and biopsy. My heart dropped when she told me that, because we could have helped her there – had she known about us.

Our employees went together and provided Jerri’s family with Thanksgiving dinner. She started her chemotherapy. We received a couple of letters from her, but the last one sounded as if more hard times had hit that family. Jerri’s plight haunted us.

Hers was the example we used in the introduction of an ambitious grant proposal to the Episcopal Health Charities. We needed a better way the proposal explained. The community needed The Rose to do more than provide mammograms and biopsies. What we needed was a physician network and a staff assigned to navigate women through the system. The Charities agreed and their grant launched the program that is now modeled throughout the nation.

The Rose's award-winning Empower Her® Sponsorship Program has been nationally recognized as a model for serving the uninsured, and, last year, provided sponsored screening and diagnostic services to more than 8,500 women. The program includes Patient Navigators and the Physicians Network, who, since beginning in 1999, have navigated almost 2,000 uninsured women with breast cancer through the healthcare maze of treatment options. Last year, alone, the Physicians Network donated over $7 million in services to patients of The Rose thereby ensuring that desperate calls like Jerri’s always have an answer.

Even though her story was the impetus for one of our most successful programs, Jerri didn’t know what she inspired. The lost of contact with her worried me. And then . . .

On 12-15-2003, I received this note, handwritten in a gold colored ink on a small Christmas card with no return address:

“I would just like to say Thank You so very, very much – it has been 5 years now, but I don’t know if it would have been – if not for you all! May God Bless you All!"

Merry Christmas from

Jerri, Paul & Steven

Bold Support -- Day 12 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-28T11:08:00.000-07:00

As we worked to ensure The Rose would be there for the women who needed it, we rarely attracted the attention and financial contributions of the bold-faced types. You know the ones I mean, those people whose names appear in the society columns, printed in bold black letters noting their presence and support of this or that charity event.

I’d attended enough non-profit events to know the importance of success stories. However, our compelling stories involved women who didn’t have insurance, and our service was in diagnosing cancer not in treating it. Plus, I’ve learned that inherent prejudice exists towards the uninsured. They’re often characterized as lazy indigents who won’t work or categorized as illegal aliens. One-on-one “asks” of donors involved the long educational process of explaining the various scenarios of the uninsured before we could solicit any level of understanding … and possible contribution.

I tried to convey that most of our sponsored women worked at low-paying jobs which didn’t provide insurance, or they had just been laid off or had some life-changing event that meant losing their coverage. One of the saddest cases was the 63-year-old, whose husband had divorced her taking with him the insurance. Finding any kind of work at that age was difficult, and she was banking on staying healthy until she was 65. The lump in her breast put a crimp in that idea. Did we ultimately help her get coverage through Medicaid/Medicare? Yes. But it took over 13 months of processing paperwork to do so.

I could sometimes get the message through to the unbelieving by asking them what would happen if they lost their job and insurance? How many months could they afford to pay for Cobra, especially if there wasn’t any money coming in? How long would they take the chance on going without insurance? What if they thought there was another job right around the corner? Would they chance having no insurance for one month? Three?

Sometimes they would listen when I explained that at that time, we had gathered over a hundred cases of women finding a lump in their breast in that first month without insurance coverage.

The truly cynical stubbornly argued, “Somehow these people find a way to pay for car insurance!”

“Excuse me,” I’d counter. “Car insurance is a State law.

“No matter,” they’d insist, “If those people cared anything about their health they’d have medical insurance.”

Yeah, right.

Even with our success in conveying the plight of our sponsored women to local foundations, we continued to struggle to attract people of means, those individuals whose personal connections could move forward our cause.

So I can tell you the month, the time of day, and exactly what I was doing when I was introduced to one of the first “bold-faced names” to cross our path. Thank goodness she was one of the good ones.

It was October, national breast cancer awareness month, and I had just gotten back from giving a lunchtime presentation. I was sitting in Felicia’s office, helping her to get reports out; we were two days behind and I was determined nothing was going to distract us. That was the moment the call from Linda Hofheinz was put through.

“Hofheinz” is a name that most long term Houstonians would recognize -- synonymous with the building of the Astrodome and linked to the city’s colorful political scene.

I cradled the telephone between my neck and ear, intent on my task, trying to do two things at once when my pen stopped in mid air. The voice on the line, responding to my hello said, “I’m Linda Hofheinz and I was diagnosed with breast cancer in April of this year.”

Linda’s voice was measured and smooth, with an almost singsong quality to it. Carefully articulating each word, she said, “I’ve been talking to Mary O from the Rose Buds support group. Do you know her?”

I said confirmed that I did, adding that Mary had been a real supporter.

Linda continued, “I know. Mary was telling me about The Rose. Actually she was raving about your programs. She’s a real fan. She told me that you help women who don’t have insurance or money to get mammograms. Is that correct?”

Again I said yes, simultaneously trying to guess what had prompted this call.

“As I was saying, I was diagnosed in April and I cannot imagine what it would be like to go through breast cancer without insurance or money. I have a strong support network. My husband and family have been wonderful, and I have insurance.”

I think I came back with some feeble response about how important it was to have support, and I started to launch into all the different services we offered for the uninsured women.

She stopped my impending verbal onslaught by saying that Mary was very knowledgeable about our programs and had impressed her was with all she had shared.

Then without skipping a beat she said, “I want to make a donation and just need to know your address. Where would you like me to send this check?”

Never in our history had anyone ever called and asked for the address to send a check.

Typically, I was the one calling people asking if I could send them information about The Rose, hoping against hope that they would read it, and maybe someday, in the future, be moved to indeed send a check.

I was stunned, and for the briefest moment I couldn’t recall the address, the silence seemed endless until I finally regrouped and stuttered through it. She then asked if we were a 501 (c) 3. I said yes, and thought I must have misunderstood what she said earlier. She is calling for information, I said to myself. I’ll send it to her and then there will probably be some kind of long approval process.

“Would you like me to send you a proposal outlining our programs or a brochure?” I asked, my confidence returning, proposals I knew how to do, fielding these kinds of calls I didn’t. “I can get right on it.” I assured her.

“No.” She said sweetly, “I’m just making a note on my check.” With that she thanked me profusely for taking her call, again complimented The Rose and decisively, yet gently, said she really must be going and hung up.

I sat staring at the receiver in my hand until Felicia’s voice pulled me back into the room. Over the next few days, I replayed the conversation a zillion times, questioning if I had heard her correctly, wondering if I had handled the call correctly.

I would soon learn that Linda was a woman of many skills, much diplomacy, and a steeled graciousness that made things happen. Her check arrived four days later -- the largest donation from an individual that we’d ever received. That check marked a turning point in our history.

Over the next few months, the calls from Linda were highlights of my day. I looked forward to talking to her, and the staff soon learned to track me down whenever she called. She always seems to posit yet another idea that would in some way or another enhance our image.

When Linda decided we needed a real brochure, she meant something professionally written, professionally photographed and professionally produced. She coerced her talented sister, Diane, into writing it, convinced her graphic designer friend Steve into handling the layout and enlisted the whole marketing team at the downtown Foley’s store into doing the photography for it. All the work was donated.

One of our original “bachelors” from the Soroptimist auctions, Randy Drake, printed three thousand copies, again all gratis, and it became the piece we used in every proposal, in press packets and with those special letters of inquiry.

Linda would continue to drop in and out of our lives at The Rose. Since the cancer diagnosis, she had taken up photography and was pretty modest about all the awards she had piled up. Her talent was obvious when she created the cover of our Cookbook – a still life featuring a vase of pink cabbage roses that makes our Cookbook stand out on the bookshelves.

Linda also designed our first logo. One day, she called me out of the blue and said, “I’ve been thinking about the image of The Rose and I think I might be able to design something that would project more of what you really stand for.”

Her design was profound and polished and captured, not only why we had started, but what we dreamed of for the coming days. And Linda knew there would be many more days for The Rose.

Soon we jumped from 7 employees to 21 employees and had to lease extra office space at the main center. New funding meant computerizing our system. We were involved in more fundraisers than ever before and began to receive publicity that would have made major corporations envious. Our circle of notables was growing.

Linda’s intuition about The Rose needing a new image was incredibly timely. We were leaving behind an old way of being and entering into a new one. We had no option, the number of women needing our help continued to explode, forcing us into new areas and levels of service.

Why We Need The Rose -- Day 11 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-27T15:30:00.000-07:00

The headlines in the year 2000 finally blared the sad and chilling truth that Texas had the highest uninsured rate of any state in the nation. In Houston, over one fourth of the population -- almost one million people (at that time) -- didn’t have coverage. A lot of women were included in that number. Private insurance, when it could be found, topped over $600 a month for one person, an impossible amount for the working poor.

Telling the story of The Rose has always meant fighting the prevailing misconception that the poor could access healthcare anytime they wanted, either through the county hospital or, if they have cancer, through M.D. Anderson.

People would say, “Anyone can get public health care.” That’s a true statement, but the cost of services is dictated by a person’s income. If you happen to be totally indigent, you are eligible for free services. Heaven forbid that a person attempt to stay off the public dole and try to earn a living. The ultimate irony was that totally indigent women received the full range of care -- from mastectomy to chemotherapy to radiation therapy to reconstruction -- all free of charge; while the working poor got only what they could afford.

No insurance and get into a premiere hospital without money? Not likely, especially if you made more than $3,000 a year and lived in Houston which was the eligibility level at some hospitals. According to the State edicts, the county hospital was the approved facility for residents of Harris County. Folks from the rest of the state looked to Galveston’s public health system for help. Oh, it’s true the occasional uninsured patient would get into a clinical trial at a major institution, but she had to have one of the wild types of cancer that matched the trials.

The maze of rules and regulations grew more complex and changing criteria for eligibility was maddening. Remember, in Texas Medicaid was virtually non- existent, saved only for children and pregnant women; for the most part it still is.

Connie was one of Dixie’s clients. She referred Connie to a public hospital for her mastectomy and chemotherapy treatments. Dixie knew about Connie’s financial struggle. She and her husband operated a small plant nursery that could barely eke out a living for their family. Unfortunately, the profits were gobbled up by the medication expenses needed for her recently diagnosed diabetic husband.

Any hopes of finding another job were squelched when she weighed it against the time and expense involved in caring for the special needs of a bed-ridden handicapped child. On paper, however, hers appeared to be a much different story. The business showed a profit for two out of the three years in the information she submitted when applying for public health. That and the fact that she was buying a home put her in the 100% payment range for services. Back then, Dixie didn’t know about these quirks in the public health system; none of us did.

So Connie carried her little referral paper to the hospital, finished the approval process and went in for her mastectomy. Before she knew it she received her first bill for $5,000. Then she was told that chemotherapy was going to cost $400 every three weeks. She’d already signed an agreement with the hospital to pay against her account which grew larger with each lab test or follow-up consultation. Before they would schedule her appointments for the chemotherapy, she was going to have to come up with the money.

When Dixie received one of those form letters sent to referring physicians, advising her that her patient was determined to be non-compliant since she had not returned for treatments, she called Connie.

Hearing Connie talk was disheartening. She was more than a little angry about the whole set up, and she had no intention of going back. The money and the hours and hours of waiting were taking a toll. She had to pay for someone to stay with her child each time she went for an appointment which might be rescheduled or would take all day. The time she had been hospitalized had really hurt what was left of the business. She simply didn’t have the money and was fighting to keep food in the house. To top things off, her husband had a heart attack during this time and couldn’t help.

The hospital suggested she get a second mortgage which she couldn’t have gotten if she’d wanted it. We’ve since learned that some hospitals strongly encouraged folks to take another mortgage on their homes to pay for treatment. For the patient who is terrified for her life, it seems the only solution.

Connie had decided she would just have to take her chances and hope the mastectomy got all of the cancer; she would do without the chemotherapy. Dixie tried to convince her otherwise, offering to call the hospital and try for new arrangements. Dixie knew Connie really needed the chemotherapy and asked her if she understood how important the treatments were?

Connie’s parting words hung in the air. “Dr. Melillo, don’t you understand,” she retorted a bit too sharply. “If I’d had an extra $400 a month to shell out, I would have had insurance.”

As always, it’s a matter of money … for our patients needing help… and for The Rose as we try to help them.

Not Your Typical Fundraiser (continued) -- Day 10 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-26T14:52:00.000-07:00

The hall was too large to have a real auction but we always gave it a try. No one could hear, the sound system was great for bands, bad for auctioneers, but people would raise their hands and someone would capture the prize. We’ve auctioned off anything and everything -- Linda and Dick of Kerr’s Wholesale donated rooms full of furniture; my cousin Chris made and donated a 6 ft. wooden glider; the year Dixie was unattached, we auctioned off a dinner and date with her.
For about eight years running $1 raffle items were a chance to win Nona Morrison’s hand- made quilts or T-Bud’s hand-crafted fly fishing pole. The big raffle items changed every year. The only one to really compete with the boat from that first year was the gorgeous walnut colored Winchester Grandfather Clock standing 8 feet tall and fully chimed. Another member of our support group did all the construction, stained and hand-finished it. He worked on the project for four months for a few hours every day after he got off work. He used it to fill up time after he lost his wife. They had been part of our support group for about two years.

About a third of the folks that bought tickets for the event also donated some kind of dessert. Ten tables were lined with slices of homemade cakes and pies, and bags of cookies. Then the same folks would turn around and pay a dollar extra for dessert.

Throughout the day, our official money changer Helen would make the rounds picking up raffle money, cake walk money, and money from the door, and then disappear into the back room to deposit in the lodge’s floor safe. Those piles of dollars would take a long time to count at the end of the day … or at least we always hoped that it would.

Traditions get started at events like this and one of them was that Dixie always served as the official greeter. Her patients loved talking to Dixie and Dixie loved talking to them. She often said that that was the best part of her job. “What other work would let me spend the day getting to gossip and visit with people?” she’d say. “I love hearing about my patients, what they’re doing, what’s happening in their lives. It doesn’t even feel like work.”

I suspect her patients accounted for about half of the folks who attended. The other half was divided between folks from my church, employees, volunteers and their families, most of the operating room staff from the hospital plus a passel of cowboys and cowgirls who often went on trail rides with Dixie.

Looking out over the crowd was like looking into the face of The Rose. You’d see some people wearing their Sunday finest, others in jeans and cowboy hats, a bunch were in t-shirts and shorts, and there’d be couple of priestly collars sprinkled in. I would spot one of our sponsored women bringing in a cake and see another standing next to the bank president behind the serving line. They were both dishing up the shrimp, both there to help.

Like I said … the Shrimp Boils were always a community affair.

That first year was a $10,000 success. The figure has steadily grown over the years, with our latest Shrimp Boils bringing in more than $100,000 annually. And they still wouldn’t be possible without priceless donations of time and energy from our staff and volunteers.

I remember ending that first event thinking that we never would have made it without the bearded man and his beautiful wife. Jim continued to “captain” the shrimp boil for the next ten years, taking on even more serious jobs along the way, like serving on the Board.

I never told Jim or Marsha about my dream. They’d understand, though. They are part of those special people who know we don’t do this alone. The Rose has had a lot of help, visible and invisible -- boxes of books sent by unknown benefactors, the unexpected gift, the members of Congress who’ve fought for us, and more. Call it God or the Universe, receiving a rose from St. Teresa or finding a penny from Regina’s mother, there seems to be some other force at work.

Dixie often says, especially during our times of crisis, “I know God has a plan for us, I just wish He’d let me in on it!”

When people ask if we are faith-based, I respond, “Heck, yes we are.” It takes a lot of faith to keep The Rose going.

Not Your Typical Fundraiser -- Day 9 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-25T14:50:00.000-07:00

Every charity relies on fundraisers. The usual events are cocktail parties and elegant galas. The Rose has always been a bit different. For many years, our primary annual fundraiser involved rounding up pickup trucks, traveling 30 miles down the road, and picking up fresh shrimp from fishing boats at Kemah.

I remember year after year following those trucks, watching the oversized ice coolers bounce around in the back of them and thinking we had lost our minds. We needed lots of coolers and lots of ice; it was a lot of shrimp. We usually hassled over the price and number of pounds right up until the day before. Actually we often had to go to two or three different places to get the total we needed. Finally all loaded up, water streaming out of the chests, we all bounced back into town. Then we sat on the tailgates of those trucks and started de-heading the little suckers, all 600 pounds of ‘em. Yes, it was July in Houston, hotter than Hades, but hey, the price was right!

But we weren’t through yet. Next we’d round up another group of volunteers and haul more food stuff inside the SPJST Lodge’s grand ballroom so we could tackle shucking 600 pounds of fresh corn, cleaning 300 pounds of potatoes, and making up 2000 little containers of cocktail sauce. It took the entire day.

Actually, we would have probably had a barbeque or something equally sane if Alan, my husband (at that time), hadn’t won this bass boat. He’d aced a hole in one at the Mickey Gilley Charity Golf Tournament. His prize was a brand new micro 15 ft. bass boat, compliments of Gilley’s brother who owned a marine business. His photo accepting the boat from Mickey made all the local papers and warranted a blurb on the evening news.

As usual I was oblivious to his latest golfing excursion. I didn’t even realize he’d taken the day off for the tournament, so I was pretty surprised when he came home all excited about winning the boat and how it would be a great fundraiser for the Rose. Actually, I didn’t follow his logic, it made more sense to me to just sell it and donate the money. But he kept on, outlining elaborate schemes on ways to turn it into a fabulous fundraiser. He talked about involving local celebrities, getting lots of publicity, a dinner, a gala, the ideas were endless.

By now I’d made the jump from corporate America, leaving behind the customary things like benefits, retirement, and regular paychecks. I had my hands full trying to run the business, write the grants, and manage the mobile unit and other programs we were offering in 1990. Pulling together a fundraising event wasn’t high on my list.

About a month passed and I still hadn’t a clue what to do with that boat, and the spouse was getting more and more huffy over my apparent lack of interest. That was when I had this dream. It had been one of those fitful nights spent staring at the ceiling worrying over the unit, hoping we’d make payroll and wondering how to find funding. Finally sleep came and with it a magical dream.

I was in house on the mezzanine level, looking down at women gathered on the first floor. A man entered. By his dress, he was a fisherman. He was a big attractive man with a white beard that covered his face. He went up to one of the women -- the prettiest woman there. She wore her beauty well with every fashion choice serving to enhance her attributes. Her laughter floated through the air as they started up the stairs.

I woke up knowing that somehow everything would be alright.

That evening during support group, a couple came. They’d attended one or two times before but I didn’t know them well. During the announcements, I explained that Alan had donated this boat to The Rose but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work.

Jim Anderson jumped right in, “What you need is a shrimp boil to go along with the boat theme. I know some folks who could do the cooking,” he offered. His wife Marsha caught his excitement and said, “Raffle the boat off, sell tickets for $5 each.”

$5? A piece? That amount caused a big debate within the group.

Marsha finally stopped the debate by saying, “We won’t have a bit of trouble selling tickets at that price … just give them to me and Jim.” The two of them exchanged knowing glances. She reached over and patted his beard.

I remember looking at her and thinking then that she looked like a dream. She had long, dark hair, and was a curvaceous woman who knew how to wear her clothes well. Her treatment had just started.

Marsha and Jim knew exactly what they were doing. We tried to deem them chairs of our first fundraiser, but they just wanted to handle the raffle. Handle it they did, selling over $5,000 worth of tickets. The entire raffle raised $6,600.

The Shrimp Boil became a community affair.

Anna Belle convinced the folks at the SPJST Lodge to donate their grand ballroom that seated 1,000 people and had this huge dance floor. She and Dixie found three country western bands to donate an hour apiece of their time. So we had the place, the raffle, and the entertainment lined up for a Sunday afternoon in July.

From the beginning there was always some wonderful benefactor or two who helped cover the cost of the shrimp and somehow we managed to get everything else donated. We spent the best part of a month gathering auction items and getting commitments for food. The first year, Marsha convinced a truck farmer friend to deliver his gift of 400 hundred pounds of potatoes straight to the hall. Usually we weren’t that lucky.

Daily folks would drop by our little Center bringing more stuff, until there wasn’t an open spot left anywhere. Volunteers canvassed local grocery stores securing butter and cooking oil, onions and spices, tea and coffee.

Since the beginning Ola Mae provided the hush puppies, the bags filled up half of her freezer and Shirley Middleton brought all the paper goods, bags and bags of plastic ware, one thousand each of dinner plates, dessert plates, paper cups and glasses, hundreds of napkins.

Jim and his friend Neil drove this huge cooking trailer over to the Lodge and took up over four parking spots. Neil would pay some of his workers to come help move the huge pots and burners and they all stayed outside cooking up the shrimp, potatoes and corn on the cob. The SPJST Ballroom would reek for weeks from the smell of all that shrimp. There’d be a lot of fussing going on about it among the Lodge members, but somehow they’d forgive us and rent the hall to us again the next year.

When that first Sunday finally arrived, people were lined up around the block waiting for us to open. At $8 bucks a piece it was a great deal.

To be continued …

Technology … And People … Making a Difference -- Day 8 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-24T20:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it only takes one person who is willing to help that moves a dream into reality. Ron Smith was one of those people. Ron was the owner of Diagnox Imaging Services and he offered to donate a fully dedicated mammography GE Imaging system, this included the X-ray machine, processor and conditioner--$160,000 worth of equipment.

He had made that offer to us in January of 1987 but we didn’t have a place to put it, and couldn’t possibly afford the staff to run it or supplies for it. Dixie and I spent weekends scouting out possible locations for its home.

She was like one of those early pioneers walking around with a divining rod looking for water. We would pull up to a shopping center; she’d get out, and walk around, then say, “Nope, not it!” and hop back into the truck. We had lots of options to explore -- vacant office buildings were another fallout of the bad economy of the 80s.

Finally, we came across the South Green Shopping center, at Fuqua and the Gulf Freeway. We both liked something about that spot which started looking even better after the leasing agent said we could have a space for free for the first three months and after that, he’d charge us $3 for every paying woman we screened. We thought it was a heck of a deal, but then what did we know?

October 1987, the first Rose mammography center opened with a waiting list of sixty women. Mammograms cost only $50 and a sponsorship program was available for high-risk women who couldn’t afford to pay. Everything in the center had been donated, from furniture, to filing cabinets to the pictures on the wall. We used to tease about being decorated in “early garage sale,” but it looked good. The volunteers made it seem homey, the technical aspects were excellent, and the women felt comfortable.

Except for the fact that we have traded in “garage sale” for “decorator-designed,” not much has changed. We still ensure that women – all women – are welcomed at The Rose.

In 25 years, we have had a fair share of “firsts” -- when we offered the first film screen mammography machines in Houston, the first Computer Aided Detection (CAD) service in 2001, and the first portable mammography unit launching our mobile program in 2006. Now, every time we experience another technological milestone – the most recent being our conversion to digital - I’m reminded of Ron’s initial gift. And I am grateful once again.

Endowing a Dream -- Day 7 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-23T06:25:00.000-07:00

A lot of miracles are associated with The Rose. Some involve life and death situations: a woman beats all the odds or a tiny cancer is serendipitously found; others revolve around the happenstance meeting with someone who returns years later and changes the course of The Rose. But few rival the sequencing of our approval as a 501(3)(c) non-profit.
Dixie called me early one morning. She was so excited she could barely talk. She had just seen a news story on the Today Show about Endow a Dream, a grant that was going to award $100,000. Everything we wanted to do could be answered by capturing this prize. So I called the organization (this was pre-web days remember) and, after what seemed forever, we finally received the application packet.

Unfortunately, one requirement stated that awards would only be made to non-profit 501(c) 3 organizations. In October 1985, we had filed a DBA (doing business as)for The Rose. We had started to organize the governing Board for it but not much else. For over a year, we had talked about needing to apply for our non-profit status.

The time for talk had ended. The award deadline was 13 days away.

Somehow out of the blue, or maybe it was through the Yeiters, our future CPA company, we found a lawyer who was willing to file the paperwork. Michael Sterns probably thought we were crazy with this harebrain idea of setting up a non-profit that offered low cost mammograms. He made us explain and re-explain what it was we wanted to do. Although the “charity” work has always been significant at The Rose, we didn’t base our application on providing free services. In fact, from the very beginning we emphasized that those who could afford to pay for services would allow us to care for those who could not.

If Michael didn’t think the concept was crazy, he sure questioned our sanity when we told him we needed it prepared, sent to the Feds (IRS) and approved in less than two weeks. Part of the application process required State Charter plus submitting Articles of Incorporation with the State and a complete budget for the next four years. To say the least, the application process is a bit daunting and a bunch of paperwork.

He agreed. Dixie and I shared the cost of his fee.

The next week was spent rounding up facts and figures, I wrote most of the narrative for the explanation and Michael started hand carrying it through the process.

Seven days later we were notified of the approval! August 15, 1986, The Rose was finally official.

After all that, we didn’t win the Endow a Dream Award. However, we did start raising money.

Being the feminist that I am, it’s a little difficult to admit that our first fundraiser involved selling men, but it’s true. The Soroptimist, a local business women’s group of about 25 members, officially hosted the Bachelor of Distinction event. We held it at the local Hilton, who allowed us to bring in our on food -- an unheard of concession for hotels.

The popular news anchor, Kathryn Turner, agreed to emcee the night and told us years later that she had never seen anyone as frightened as Dixie was to be on stage. Even though Shirley Middleton had ransacked her Bridal Shop and found Dixie a fancy evening dress, even though Dixie talked to hundreds of groups about breast cancer, this was different. We were crossing a line into the wild world of special events and fundraising. Rosalie Kuntz and Stella Walters handled the money, Robbie Rainwater handled the cash bar. We auctioned off about 29 men -- physicians, bankers, an ex or two -- it didn’t matter; it was for a good cause, The Rose. In the forefront and background was Sherry Moore, who commandeered that fundraiser and, later, many, many others.

We raised $7,000 that night. That $7,000 was the seed money that opened our first screening center.

Anytime someone tells me their group is too small to make a difference in the world, I tell the story of the Soroptimists and the Bachelors Auction. I am so grateful to that handful of women who believed in us. They didn’t know then that the snacks they donated, the hours they spent mailing invitations and decorating would be the launching point of an organization that would become a national model for health programs reaching the medically underserved.

Too small? Never.

Planting Our Rose Garden -- Day 6 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

I could write ten books about the women* in our support groups.
In 1989, the jury was still "out" concerning the clinical and/or psychological value of support groups. One line of thought among the survivors went something like, "I have my family or friends to lean on, I don't need a support group." Of course, most of the physicians thought it was a bunch of … shall we just say “a waste”?

Dixie was convinced that nothing was more important than The Rose offering a support group. Her ideas were eventually vindicated when a study revealed women who participated in support groups experienced twice the survival rate as those who didn't.

We feverishly reproduced the article, attached it to our announcements about our new Breast Cancer Support Group, and distributed it to the physicians. During those first few months, the only women who attended were Dixie's patients. Eventually, other physicians started recommending the group to their patients. And once they did, the support groups grew.

Dixie's patient's definitely had the advantage. Once diagnosed, she'd suggest they attend a support group meeting prior to their surgery. She didn't make it an order or a big deal. She simply convinced them that they could learn what to expect from other women who’d had a mastectomy or lumpectomy.

The Rose Garden – the name given to the group - met every second and fourth Tuesday. The two particle board desks at the Center would be pushed back against the wall and the mismatched orange and green chairs were moved next to the overstuffed brilliant blue couch to create a makeshift semicircle.

The entire center only occupied 980 sq. ft, of which the reception area was about one-third of it. A huge round pole stood smack dab in the middle of the front area that we tried to camouflage it with plants and coat trees but it never cooperated. Attempting to project images via slides was a joke. We had no room for the screen and the walls were covered from top to bottom with donated treasures or posters. But the speakers came anyway.

And, in spite of it all, the women did as well. At some meetings more than 40 women would gather in that little spot of our world.

Imagine being a first timer and entering a room packed with women who were obviously at different stages of treatment. Some were bald; some were not. Some were old; some were young. A few had family members with them. First impressions of our Rose Garden included the sound of laughter, the din of conversation, and the smells of fresh coffee and sweet food.

The talk didn't let up until Dixie arrived. She usually ran a bit late, dragging in from feeding her horses or stopping by one more patient's room at the hospital. No one cared how late she was. Then, as now, Dixie brought hope into the room.

In those days, our support group wasn’t sanctioned locally by the nationally recognized society of “Cancer Authority.” Seems our facilitator had not completed the certification program, and our group didn’t follow the structured 6 to 8 week program where appropriate topics are assigned for each week. Dixie argued that the women might not be ready to discuss emotional issues right on schedule by week three.

After year one, we convinced the powers that be that perhaps the Rose Garden should be approved. Our cause may have been somewhat assisted when Dixie became the Chair of the Reach to Recovery Group and been assigned as the Physician Liaison for the state-wide Texas Breast Cancer Screening Project.

We followed somewhat of a semi-structured format. We started by sharing articles and lists of new books in the lending library. The prized document of every first timer was Dr. Melillo's Official Vitamin List.

Somewhere between 6:45 and 7:00 PM the support group meetings would start. One by one, each woman would introduce herself and share a little information about her journey.

“I'm Mary Lou and one week after I turned 32 I was diagnosed. That was 13 months ago.” Mary Lou wore a long red wig that had started to look like it was way too much hair for her body which seemed tinier at each meeting. “I'm taking my last chemotherapy this week. I have a nine-year-old who has reached that ignorant stage, she ignores everything and a three-year-old who wants to know where Mommy’s hair went.”

“I'm Dianne and I was diagnosed two years ago but had a reoccurrence. I've got metastasis to the liver and I’ve done the rounds of chemo so the next step is having a bone marrow transplant. It all depends on if everything works out, if the insurance approves it and if my blood count comes back ok.” Dianne's hair was short, her body swollen.

“I'm Margaret and this is my second round with it also. Chemotherapy just isn't working. I had a double mastectomy.” Margaret's daughters always came with her. They sat on either side of her and with mischief in their eyes but still straight-faced tell the group that their mother was really being grumpy lately so they tried to ignore her. “After all,” they countered. “She did have the big C.” The group usually took a second or two to recover and recognize that a big tease had been shared between the three women. The truth of their relationship was revealed as the girls held Maragaret's hand or kept touching the little slips of hair that was left on her head.

"I'm Liz and, like Mary Lou, I was 32 when I had my mastectomy on the right side. A year after my diagnosis, I had to have a mammogram on the other side. This was before The Rose opened so I was going to a different clinic. Well when I got there I found out that the lady at the desk had cancelled my appointment. She said, ‘You're too young to have a mammogram.’ I just looked at her and fired back, ‘Well, Lady, I'm not too young to have breast cancer!’" We would shake our heads.

"I'm Susan and I haven't had my surgery yet." The room would become quieter. "I just got my diagnoses yesterday." She'd continue and someone would begin asking the questions to get her talking. If Dixie were her doctor the others would start telling stories about being a Dixie patient. They'd tell her she was now part of a community that no one would volunteer to be in but at least with Dixie it was tolerable. They talked of being their own alum and how they’d make their 30^th reunion.

Everyone always clapped when the gorgeous, well-coifed woman, wearing the prettiest clothes in the world, would say, "I'm Ellen and I'm a 13-year survivor." Of course most of us were more interested in hearing about Ellen’s new boyfriend or her latest travel adventure. Her shiny silver locks confirmed she was pushing 60 but her spirit and energy rivaled any 20-year-old. She was the ultimate volunteer, busy with a dozen organizations including The Rose. Her only reoccurring problem was not having enough hours in the day to do all she was scheduled to do.

Sometimes a woman voiced feeling like she wasn't being a good wife since she couldn't keep up with all the household chores. The others would dive in on that one. “Let it pile up!” they'd say. Occasionally, we’d hear skittish talk of what else a "good wife" didn't feel like doing or how unattractive they felt at times but usually those stories got a little too uncomfortable and just hung in the air, seldom resolved.

The very few dared to talk of their bitterness. No one judged them. The woman would be encouraged to talk out her feelings, but the group had a way of not dwelling in the mire of despair.

Some would share how they were learning to put their needs first and were taking better care of themselves. Some would tell of a friend's kindness, a meal cooked, kids collected and taken away for a weekend.

Dixie would end the meetings saying, "None of us knows how long we have on this earth. The only thing we do have is right now, right here and each other. This group has taught me that I need to appreciate every sunrise and every sunset. And I've also learned the importance of hugs." She'd smile and remind everyone, "Hugs are good for the immune system. You can never get enough hugs.”

"Or cookies!" Someone from the back of the room would respond.

The room would erupt in laughter. Dixie would start the rounds until everyone had been soundly hugged. Then we ate and talked some more. Some nights we got out early. Anytime before 10 PM was early.

Dixie and I attended more funerals during those early years than my priest officiated over. I started learning about those sunrises and sunsets, and every other week I was brought to a new sense of awe by the courage found within our little Rose Garden.

*The names of the support group members were changed for reasons of privacy.

Anna Belle -- Day 5 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-21T13:13:00.000-07:00

The people who were brave enough to take those first steps alongside us kept me humble. From our beginning, volunteers have been at the heart of The Rose. I marvel at the generosity of people, and always wonder what motivates them give so freely of their time and talents.

Anna Belle Baugus was one of those people. She started at the center as a volunteer and later became our first paid non-technical employee. She was a patient of Dixie's, having gone through her own bout with breast cancer a few years before I met her. Seems, breast cancer was the nemesis of her family, her mother, and one sister had died of it, and her other sister was fighting it.

Meeting Anna Belle meant coming face to face with the enemy. Breast cancer was no longer a nebulous clinical diagnosis confined to a few women who briefly crossed my path. Now it became fully exposed, unfathomable in its callousness. The threat of reoccurrence was palpable and became a silent and invisible intruder bordering every conversation, every success, every passage of normal living.

Anna Belle would have violently objected to my description. She’d be the first to insist that breast cancer was just one of those things that happens in one’s life.

Describing Anna Belle is a challenge. Take everything good, mix it with a lot of country, top it with genuine hospitality and dabble in some of most outrageous humor you'd ever expect to find in a woman, and you'd have a glimpse of Anna Belle. A natural beauty, she had a certain elegant presence contradicted slightly by the layers of denim she often wore. Her sharp, opinionated speech and no nonsense approach to life regularly caught me off guard. Anna Belle told it as it was. Sometimes the telling wasn't always easy to hear.

You'd think someone who'd had such intimate history with breast cancer would be incredibly sympathetic to the plight of others but her she never had any "truck" with whiners. Her approach was you do what you have to do, you pay attention and don't believe everything the doctors tell you. You’re the one that decides how long you're going to live, she’d tell you.

She always had a new joke to share. Invariably it bordered on the risqué or bawdy but would be just clean enough to squeak by. Then she'd fall into hysterical laughter when she delivered the punch lines. You couldn't help but join in her merriment.

Anna Belle thought most of our patients were geographically challenged. Often she would schedule an appointment and hang up the telephone saying, "That one will never find us."

She was never more vocal than when she thought someone was trying to take advantage of our sponsorship program. I don't think any non-deserving person managed to get by her. She'd look the patient right in the eyes and make a comment about what a nice suit or ring she had on (or fine automobile she was driving) and then she'd immediately ask how much did she think she could pay towards this mammogram.

Back then I really worried about her questioning too much. I wrestled with the thought that we might actually turn away someone who really needed our help, but funds were limited. I sure didn’t want our criteria to be so strict that we couldn’t make a decision to help someone who was temporarily down on her luck.

"There would always be some," I'd try to assuage her indignation, "who would try to beat the system."

"And I know everyone of them," she'd retort.

My worries were ill-founded. For that woman who really was down on her luck, Anna Belle would be the first in line to help. The old saying "give you the shirt of her back," must have started with her. Her “heart of gold” was never more obvious than during support groups.

By the time Anna Belle became a part of The Rose, she was clearing her third cancer free year. Anna Belle had undergone a double lumpectomy, the second one was done months after her first surgery. She was one of the rare women who didn't lose her hair during chemotherapy, something she usually didn't share with the support group. She had lots of other stories to share.

When Anna Belle had a reoccurrence, the cancer was especially vicious. I remember the day, the look on her face, the tipping point that foreshadowed the end of her life. She had completed her annual mammogram. The tech called asking me to go back to the mammography work area. I pushed open the doors to see her leaning up against the wall, staring at the films on the light box. The cancer was obvious.

“This makes me so damn mad.” she said with a pure hatred that I had never heard in anyone’s voice before.

The months that followed were impossible. Anna Belle was the office manager, she held together the entire operation. Hers was the back that carried the load and her load was about to become even heavier.

The process started -- biopsy, surgery, bilateral mastectomies, reconstruction, complications and chemotherapy. This time she did lose her hair; she was incredibly ill. Yet she kept on working, through the next year and a half, at first trying to keep her regular schedule, then moving to part time.

The most vivid memories I have of her now all revolve around those last months of working. She’d walk into my office wearing a sassy hat, or bright scarf, make-up always perfect, lipstick in place. The most important thing she wore was her “I can beat this” face.

She might have too if her husband of over 29 years hadn’t contracted a cancer of his own. The tumor that appeared on his arm seemed to multiply overnight covering his body. He was diagnosed with leukemia, even more aggressive than what she was fighting. Within ten months he was dead.

She once told me he had no choice but to leave, he couldn’t bare to see her so ill. Once he died, Anna Belle’s cancer metastasized to her lungs. The battle was winding down, and one day, much too soon, she was gone.

This same two-year period marked a huge growth cycle at The Rose. The Rose Joan Gordon Center was bulging at its seams and months were spent finding it a larger, new home.

We opened the Rose on Vista in Pasadena which immediately became incredibly busy and was a huge success. A year later, we opened a small screening center across town which proved to be a time consuming and short lived disaster.

We jumped from 7 employees to 21 employees and had to lease extra office space at the main center. New funding meant computerizing our system and attempting to combine our multi data bases, a feat we never quite achieved. We were involved in more fund raisers than ever before and received publicity that would have made major corporations envious. We were leaving behind an old way of being and entering into a new one. We had no option, the number of women needing our help continued to explode, forcing us into new areas and levels of service.

I felt Annabelle’s absence with every change. The challenges were sharper without her sometimes cynical but always encouraging humor that kept me grounded. Our successes never again would be celebrated with her outrageous enthusiasm.

As much as we welcomed the new, it’s hard to say goodbye, especially to an old friend.

Meeting Our Match (continued) - Day 4 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-20T12:29:00.000-07:00

Rose Kushner did not let up. After our meeting in Miama, she called every Friday.
“What have you done about setting up that non-profit?” she demanded.

“Nothing yet...." I would start to explain why, but she was a "no excuse" persona and she’d launch into her next question.

“How many letters have you written about the need for Medicare to cover screening mammograms?”

“Well, I’ve started…” My feeble explanations were never enough. I wanted to say,"I’m working 55-60 hours a week at my regular job, plus doing everything needed for The Rose. And some days I just run out of me."

“Have you even called your Congressman?” Her questions pummeled over the phone lines. I would usually hang up feeling totally chastised and also totally resolved that I would get something – anything—done by her next call.

Rose felt it was her duty to personally remind us about what needed to be done. Whether it was a new bill before Congress, the insurance debate, or informed consent, we needed to know about it and, more importantly, do something about it.

No one would deny that it was Rose’s influence and dogged determination that resulted in the introduction of a Congressional bill authorizing Medicare coverage for screening mammograms. She pulled out all the stops for that one. She arranged for Dixie to testify in front of the Senate Committee on Health. What an opportunity!

Of course, Rose convinced Dixie it was perfectly normal to fly to Washington, testify before Congress and also pay all your own expenses. Some days you didn’t know what hit you once Rose got started.

When the day came for her to testify, Dixie carried the black cassette that housed her precious slide program of photos – including the ones of the advanced cancer. She never let it out of her sight. She dressed conservatively, put on her best doctor face, and sat waiting in the illustrious chambers as the committee gathered. Suddenly she realized that her body was moving uncontrollably. Back and forth her torso bounced, slamming her back against the chair. It was her heart -- beating so hard it literally moved her chest. There was no way to stop it. She took a deep breath and pulled away from the chair seat but it continued to pound. She was so intent on trying regain control, she didn’t hear Senator Ted Kennedy invite her to the microphone. He announced her name a second time. Once she took her place and those slide images hit the screen, she returned to pure Dixie form.

She looked straight at the Chairman, shook her finger at him, then pointed to the screen. “That, Mr. Chairman, could be a picture of your mother or grandmother!”

The bill passed. Although it was repealed in November 1989, the law was reinstated in January 1991. Rose told a "funny" inside story about that bill. She said it passed only because the senators were convinced that women would not really use it. I bet they were surprised as that line item in the budget kept increasing, year after year.

When we finally started our non-profit and decided to name it The Rose, we did so partly because we wanted the name to be attractive and inviting to women, partly because of family ties for both Dixie and me, but mostly because of Rose Kushner. So I wrote to her knowing she’d be overjoyed with our news. Her response, typical of Rose, was candid, “What the hell do I need some living tribute for?”

I was crushed. Was there nothing I could do to please this lady? Years later, Harvey told us she never missed an opportunity to include in her public talks that there was a mammogram center in Houston named after her.

Sadly, Rose Kushner, our inspiration to dream beyond our limitations, never saw The Rose. She died from a reoccurrence in 1990.

Postscript … My wish is that everyone who has a dream also has a “Rose” in their life. Someone who cares enough to push when needed and persists beyond the pushing.

Or maybe we should become a “Rose” in someone’s life. Who knows? We may just nourish someone else’s dream right into reality.

This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.
© 2011 Dorothy Gibbons. All rights reserved.

Meeting Our Match - Day 3 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-19T17:45:00.000-07:00

In March of 1985, Dixie convinced me to go with her to the International Breast Cancer Conference held in Miami. What a trip! We stayed at this outrageously wild art deco hotel located in the middle of the Coconut Grove area. I had a ball being at the conference, sitting shoulder to shoulder with some of the finest minds in the world. At that time, I didn’t understand half of what the speakers were talking about, but it was a great introduction to the physician education process.

Rose Kushner was listed as one of the speakers for the Miami program. She had written the book Why Me? What Every Woman Should Know About Breast Cancer to Save Her Life, one of the few books written for lay people outlining treatment plans for about breast cancer. Dixie and I had read the book, so I wrote her a letter, applauding her work, and asking if she’d meet with us sometime during the conference. I was hoping for she’d agree to coffee, but she insisted on dinner. Rose had spoken, it was done.

Rose was a feisty woman with a mouth that wouldn’t quit. She was in her mid-fifties, with dark hair, and stood about 5 feet. She was the scourge of the medical community. The doctors, especially the breast surgeons, were terrified of her. I was absolutely enthralled.

A reporter for the Baltimore Sun, she was one of the first women to cover Vietnam. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1974, she made medical history by refusing to undergo the one stage procedure. At that time, the standard course of treatment for a woman with a lump was to put her under anesthesia, remove the lump and if it was cancer, then the entire breast would be removed. Rose was appalled with the idea that a woman would wake up and find her breast gone.

“They told me they’d come out after removing the lump and tell my husband if it was cancer,” she explained. “I said ‘Why? It’s not Harvey’s breast!’” When the medical staff kept insisting this was the standard treatment, she set out to find a different way. After eighteen telephone calls, she found a general surgeon who agreed to remove only the lump which proved to be malignant. Only then did she allow a cancer specialist to remove her breast.

Eventually, she was awarded the Society of Surgical Oncology's James Ewing Award for outstanding contributions by a lay person to the fight against cancer. Harvey said it was poetic justice "because the society's members had booed her off their stage in 1974 when she challenged their standard treatments."

On this sparkling March evening in Miami, Dixie and I sat in a highly recommended restaurant with the famous Rose Kushner and her husband, Harvey. However, for me, the quality of the meal was lost to the conversation. I have never been quite so impressed. I had watched in awe earlier that afternoon as Rose debated with one of the leading authorities in breast cancer and other physicians about patient rights. She was outspoken and mesmerizing.

As we shared about the work we had been doing back in Pasadena, we noted all the community presentations Dixie had done in the last year.

Rose wasn’t impressed. In fact, she scowled.

“I used to do that,” she said, “and like you, I did it for free. I would go anywhere, anytime, and gave hundreds of talks. But I learned very quickly that my time has value and people appreciate you more when you charge something.”

Then she went on to say, “All those speeches don’t mean squat. A few women hearing about early detection won’t make any difference. Until mammograms are covered and mandated by Medicare, it doesn’t matter how much educating you do.”

At that stage in her career, Dixie was pretty prim and proper. Her dress, her style, the way she talked all were a bit conservative. Dixie had made it through medical school by cultivating “confrontation avoidance” survival techniques. She wasn’t about to challenge Rose. But as the evening wore on, Rose’s opinions were starting to sound like personal rebuffs.

Dixie shared the story of convincing the hospital administrator to lower the cost of the mammograms and explained her concern about it still costing too much.

“Too many women are coming to me with late cancers,” she said detailing her latest cases, expecting a tad bit of sympathy. She wasn’t ready for Rose’s reply.

“Then why don’t you get off your ___ (what do you think she said?) and do something about it?” Rose challenged.

Both Dixie and I sputtered.

“Like what?” Dixie asked.

“Start your own clinic. Create a non-profit. Find a way to take care of those women.” Rose launched into a tirade about what could be done if we had any gumption at all. Then she spent the rest of the evening hammering us about the importance of being involved with the legislative process.

The evening ended on a tentative note. We attempted parting niceties and offered half-hearted promises to keep in touch.

We left Miami battle- scarred.

The Early Years (continued) -- Day 2 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

(Note: This memory contains graphic descriptions of the reality of cancer.)

The phone calls always seemed to come when I was up to my, well you know the expression, in details for some elaborate event sponsored by the hospital. As PR director at Bayshore, medical photography was one of my assignments. I always dreaded those calls from Dixie. Those photos were different.

“Dorothy, we have another one.” Dixie would say. “Can you come over to the office?”

“Right now?” I panicked knowing I was about to lose a couple of hours from an already packed day.

“Yes, now. I just finished examining her. It’s worse than the last one, been out of the skin for two years. I need to document her case.”

I’d grabbed my trusty Canon, check for slide film, flash attachments and headed over to her office. These were the photos that would make the biggest difference in Dixie’s education presentations. I’d been handling the medical photography for years and was never squeamish about it, no matter what type of case.

I remember being called to the Operating Room when they wanted to chronicle extracting a 15-pound tumor from a woman’s abdomen. Bracketing and F-stops were the priority. I was most concerned about whether I had enough contrast among all the red of the open flesh. Much later, after specimen shots and measurements, I allowed the realization to settle in, “Hey, that was a living, breathing person under those sterile drapes.”

I never saw anything other than a “person” when I responded to the calls from Dixie. No matter how much she’d try to warn me, nothing ever prepared me for seeing advanced breast cancer. The women would be waiting for me, sitting alone in the exam room, covered by a gown. As I’d start to position them against a backdrop, we’d remove the covering and I would steel my face.

The sight was never the same. The smell of rotting flesh was the common factor. You knew when you entered the room what you were about to see wasn’t going to be good.

Sometimes it looked like a hunk of raw, oozing hamburger meat, attached to the outside of a woman’s breast. A closer look revealed the “hunk” was coming from the inside, stretching the skin in a grotesque shape.

The worse case was a young 28-year-old, whose cancer was so bad that it looked like it had exploded right out of her breast. Resembling a yellow cauliflower-bordered cavern, the gaping hole, about the size of a fist, sat in the very middle of her right breast and the muscles covering her ribcage could be seen. She was the single mother with two kids and no money. She had to keep working for as long as possible. Two weeks after I took the photo, she was dead.

One of the saddest cases was an elderly lady whose children had brought her in because “Granny couldn’t breathe” and “Granny had a bad smell about her.” She couldn't breathe because the cancer causing the ugly sores on her chest had also eaten into her lungs. No one had ever seen Granny undressed, so no one knew how long those sores had been there.

The woman I was to photograph this day had hid her tumor by covering it with diapers tucked inside her bra. She had discovered the lump in her breast a long time ago, but her husband had lost his job and with it, their medical insurance. Since she didn’t want it to be a “pre-existing disease” when he did find work and they could get insurance again, she never told anyone about it.

When this lady’s tumor erupted through the skin, she still didn’t understand the significance. She thought that no matter how big it got, it could be removed by surgery. She’d seen the newspaper stories about Dixie and made her appointment, hoping to find someone who could help.

The photo shoot went quickly. Afterwards, Dixie and I sat in her office. We didn’t talk. We sat, our minds racing but our voices stilled by the scene. We sat for the longest time.

“Unbelievable,” I said, finally breaking the silence, “how on earth did she hide that for so long from her husband?”

Dixie sighed, “I asked her that. She said she always kept her clothes on, even at night she wore a bra under her gown. I doubt she and husband were intimate anymore. They were so worried about money and no work and losing their home.”

“What now?” I asked.

Dixie replied, “Nothing … there’s nothing that can be done. All I can do is hold her hand while she dies.”

This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.

© 2011 Dorothy Gibbons. All rights reserved.

The Early Years -- Day 1 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

2011-10-17T09:49:00.000-07:00

Local folks would try to convince you that Pasadena Texas in 1984 was the tourist Mecca for the whole state. After all, Pasadena was home of the infamous Gilley’s, the nationally known Strawberry Festival and oddly enough it could tout that NASA was located within its city limits. The truth was tourism couldn’t compare to oil and gas, Pasadena’s true glory. Thousands of people made their living at the petroleum plants that lined the Houston Ship Channel. Folks from outside the city limits seemed put off by the sometimes suspect quality of the air, even describing it as being a bit chewy. But the locals knew differently, that strange odor in the air was “the smell of money,” or so they said.

"Good ol’ boys" wasn’t just a working term, it was a way of life.

At that time, Gilley’s was the largest country and western dance hall in the entire nation, made even more famous as the film site for the movie Urban Cowboy. Pick-up trucks, cowboy hats and boot scooting were regular sights at the 15,000 sq. ft.-pieced together-barn-of-a-place. But its main attraction was the mechanical bull which landed some hapless want-to-be cowboy in the emergency room at least once a week. I never acquired a taste for C&W, but as the Public Relations Director for Bayshore Hospital I spent plenty of time enduring it. I experienced pure torture every time I had to host an out-of-town group to yet another evening at Gilley’s.

Promoting new physicians was one of my better duties, especially when it came to Dixie. She hadn’t been on staff for very long before I was called upstairs for the official “administrative” meeting.

Dixie was every PR person’s dream, a physician who was truly marketable. She was one of the few female general surgeons at that time and her passion for her work was obvious. Plus, she was pushing a new service that no other hospital was offering, at least not in our community.

“You cannot x-ray breasts with the same machine that’s used to x-ray a broken arm.” She argued with the hospital administrator during that first meeting when I got to observe her in action. “You have to have a dedicated mammography unit.” She had taken the Director of Radiology in tow and they were making a pretty convincing case to the administrator.

They pointed out that interest in women’s health was on the rise and that by providing more services to women the public's interest in the hospital would increase. The administrator was listening.

Dixie – even then - pressed on pricing.

“Charging $160 for a mammogram is too much money,” Dixie fumed. “Make it a reasonable amount and I’ll go out and give talks to the community. I’ll promote it to the hilt and I promise you I’ll get the women in here.”

“What’s reasonable?” the administrator asked.

He shouldn’t have done that. One should never ask Dixie what’s reasonable especially when it comes to what to charge a woman for screening. She wanted it to be $50, he choked on $100 but finally they agreed at $80.

So the deal was struck, the machine ordered and the marketing plan created. The city’s first dedicated breast imaging center opened and Dixie began her speaking circuit.

During the next 2 years, we gave over 300 community education presentations to anyone who would listen. I’d make the arrangements and do the driving. Dixie would do the talking. Civic groups, church groups, garden clubs, women’s groups, chemical plant employees, Rotarians and Rotary Anns, no one was turned down. Most were small groups, 20 or 30 people. Dixie once gave a talk that had only two people show up, and one was the other speaker.

A better evangelist for breast cancer screening has yet to be found. Dixie’s name and Breast Cancer became synonymous throughout the community. Women insisted on seeing her for breast exams or surgery.

Those 300+ presentations did their job. Women were becoming aware. But those drives were also giving us time together … to dream.

This memory is the first in a series of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.

Clients Invited to "Create While You Wait" During Pink Days at The Rose

2011-06-09T14:00:00.000-07:00

Individuals making an appointment for a mammogram will also get the opportunity to make art when two local breast cancer organizations combine their strengths for Pink Days at The Rose Galleria. This collaborative effort of the Pink Ribbons Project, in motion against breast cancer, and The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization offering screenings and diagnostic services for the insured and uninsured, is a six-month venture on the first Tuesday of each month from June to November.

“We want to offer Houston women a positive, powerful tool with which to take charge of their breast health and overall wellbeing,” said Dorothy Gibbons, co-founder and CEO of The Rose. “By pairing Pink Ribbons Project’s expertise in arts education and The Rose’s high-quality breast health services, we can provide the women of Houston with a unique and positive breast health care experience.”

Each first Tuesday will feature a different guest presenter. Artist Kermit Eisenhut, a member of the Pink Ribbons Project Advisory Board, launched the program on June 7. He provided instruction on a simple, fun art project for those awaiting their breast screening appointments or those who chose to stay after.

The subsequent first Tuesdays will feature opportunities for clients to be creative with jewelry-making and needlework as well as relax through yoga and massage.

Along with helping to coordinate the activities for Pink Days at The Rose Galleria, Pink Ribbons Project is covering the costs of the initial screening mammogram of uninsured clients who book on those Tuesdays: June 7, July 5, August 2, September 6, October 4, or November 1. Should further services be necessary for those uninsured clients, Pink Ribbons Project will cover those costs as well.

“Pink Ribbons Project mission is to save lives and improve the quality of life for those touched by breast cancer,” noted Loubel Cruz Galik, Executive Director for Pink Ribbons Project. “Helping to provide a day of art and education while also ensuring that uninsured women are well cared for is perfectly in line with what we are all about.”

For a complete list of activities, please contact Karen Campbell at kcampbell@therose.org. To book an appointment during the Pink Days at The Rose Galleria program, call 281.484.4708.

The Rose Shrimp Boil - Back for the 22nd Year!

2011-06-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

Time to pull out your Hawaiian Attire and Hula Skirts again ‘cause The Rose 22nd Annual Shrimp Boil is coming to the Pasadena Convention Center, Saturday, July 9. Bring your family and enjoy scrumptious food, great fun, and entertaining dancing and music, while raising money for one of the area’s most enduring charities – The Rose.

Last year, Southeast Houston’s oldest and largest fundraising event attracted over 1,000 people and grossed more than $110,000 with 80 Silent Auction items, 10 Live Auction items, and 2 Raffles. This year promises to be even better.

Doors open at 4:00 p.m. Pre-sale adult tickets are $20 and can be purchased online at https://therose.ejoinme.org/MyPages/ShrimpBoil/tabid/125625/Default.aspx. At the door, it’ll cost you $25. For kids 4-10 years of age, tickets are only $10, which includes a Kid’s Hot Dog Meal plus admission to the popular “Kids Zone.”

As you finish off mounds of fabulous, finger-licking good shrimp and sides, enjoy the entertainment and auctions. The Grateful Geezers and The Pee-Wee Bowen Bands will keep the joint jumping; while you cruise the Silent Auction tables (4:00-7:30 p.m.). You’ll want to purchase some Raffle Tickets, too, for a chance to win our first prize – a 46” LED-LCD HDTV, donated by the ZACHRY Company. Our amazing Live Auction begins at 6:00 p.m.

This year’s theme, Aloha Hollywood, kicks off a celebration of The Rose’s 25th Anniversary, which culminates in a grand 25th Anniversary Silver Gala on November 10, 2011. For 25 years, The Rose has provided screening mammograms, diagnostic services, and access to breast cancer treatment for all women regardless of their ability to pay. So when you buy a table, raffle ticket, or auction item, you are helping The Rose continue this important service to the community. Co-founders of the organization, surgeon Dr. Dixie Melillo and The Rose CEO Dorothy Weston Gibbons, as always, will be at the Shrimp Boil meeting, greeting and thanking the 1000-plus supporters and survivors expected to attend.

Sponsorships are still available. You can find all the information you need on our website under our “News & Events” tab. We are very grateful to last year’s sponsors including Bayshore Medical Center, Pinnacle Financial Strategies, Precision Radiotherapy Center, The Greensheet, Bayway Lincoln, Buffalo Flange, Inc., Coastal Plastic Surgery, East Houston General Surgery, Phelps Insurance, Casa Olé, Best Buy, Bay Area Elite Properties, Buxton Interests, Inc., Rosewood Funeral Home, KBR, Shell Deer Park and Taylor & Taylor Construction LP.

“We prominently publish and display a sponsor’s name as a supporter of The Rose and the fight against breast cancer,” said Michelle Hanson Special Events Manager. “Even if a sponsor can’t attend, we still recognize them publicly and in print,” she said.

Another way for Houston businesses to support the event is to donate an item for the live and silent auctions. “There’s room in the mix for prizes big and small,” Hanson said. “Participants will bid on everything from airline tickets and automobiles to free dinners at the area’s best eateries, to gift cards at favorite stores.”

“Additionally, we invite everyone to visit The Rose website (http://www.therose.org/) to learn more about the many women we’ve assisted and the many lives we’ve helped save,” said Hanson.

For more information about The Rose 2011 Shrimp Boil and how to participate, call Hanson at (281) 464-5165 or contact her via e-mail at mhanson@TheRose.org.

Bikers Against Breast Cancer Helps Family Thank The Rose

2011-05-11T12:49:00.000-07:00

HOUSTON – More than 500 riders, volunteers, and supporters participated in the 3rd Annual Bikers Against Breast Cancer (BABC) record-setting ride Saturday, May 7. And at least one new rider plans to make it an annual event.
Debbie Stokes has arthritis, so she never considered a long ride an option. But as soon as she heard the BABC ride would be benefitting The Rose, she immediately signed up. According to Debbie, her daughter Elizabeth is alive today because of the breast cancer organization that provides services for the insured and uninsured.

At 21 years of age, Elizabeth found a lump during a routine breast self exam. The Liberty resident had learned about the importance of breast health care when she was 19 and a t-shirt attracted her to an educational booth at Houston’s annual Buzzfest concert. Since then, she’s taken care of herself and encouraged her friends to do so as well. However, as a young mother, she told herself the lump and her needs could wait and decided not to mention it to her doctor. Elizabeth’s father Larry had other plans.

Elizabeth’s aunt (Larry’s sister) is a 30-year survivor. He didn’t want his daughter taking any chances, so he applied a bit of paternal pressure. When Elizabeth went for her six-week checkup after having given birth to son Aiden, she mentioned the lump. Aware that she was uninsured, her doctor also knew of the services provided by The Rose and referred her for a screening. A mammogram, ultrasound, and a biopsy later, she got the news from Dr. Dixie Melillo, her physician and the Co-founder of The Rose.

She had breast cancer.

Both Elizabeth and Debbie thought of her own child when the report was received. Blue-eyed Aiden inspired Elizabeth. Debbie confesses her first thought was “Why not me?” and described the experience as “the hardest thing a parent can see her child go through.”

The Rose assisted Elizabeth in accessing the state-funded Medicaid Breast and Cervical Cancer Services Program. Soon she was insured and receiving aggressive rounds of chemotherapy at MD Anderson. She finished her last round March 7 and was pronounced cancer free on April 1.

“My mom never left my side,” the now 22-year-old Elizabeth reports.

“She kept telling me, ‘Failure is not an option,’” explained Debbie.

“I had an incentive – I wanted to watch my son grow up,” Elizabeth concluded.

Inspired by Elizabeth’s courage and tenacity, Debbie claimed her own victory when she completed the 45 miles on Saturday.

“I owe it to The Rose,” Debbie noted. “I wish I could do more. I tell everyone about what a great organization The Rose is, because, unfortunately, it’s still a secret to many.”

On top of caring for Elizabeth and helping out with her grandson, Debbie plans to continue to be a vocal advocate for The Rose and for young women not having to wait until they are 40 years of age to get coverage for mammograms.

Totals for the event are still being tallied, but 2011 BABC ride looks to be another record-breaking year. The event has grown from 125 bikes raising $10,000 in 2009 to this year’s estimated 391 riders and 85 ghost riders, raising nearly $50,000 for The Rose. A new opportunity called a “ghost rider” allowed for participation for those who would not be riding but who wanted to make a donation. In addition, more than 75 volunteers assisted with the registration, silent auction, and raffle.

“I applaud the incredible Bikers Against Breast Cancer Committee led by D’Etta Casto DeLeon for creating an outstanding event,” said Dorothy Gibbons, CEO and Co-founder of The Rose. “Looking over that sea of bikes was amazing. And I celebrated as stories were shared, tears were shed, and laughter and music made for a great day. There aren’t enough words to adequately thank the riders, committee, volunteers, and staff who made this fundraiser such a success.”

Bikers Against Breast Cancer launched in the Houston area in 2009. The committee consists of volunteers, assisted by The Rose staff. In its three-year history, BABC has raised a total of nearly $100,000 to benefit The Rose.

Jam for the Cause on Great Day Houston!

2010-10-02T12:32:00.000-07:00

Special thanks to Tina Steele or organizing this wonderful event for The Rose. We appreciate you!

The Rose: Where personal attention is foremost, not insurance coverage Breastcancer News Archives Houston Community Newspapers Online - News Around Town

2010-10-01T06:48:00.000-07:00

The Rose: Where personal attention is foremost, not insurance coverage Breastcancer News Archives Houston Community Newspapers Online - News Around Town

The Rose continues battle against cancer Breastcancer News Archives Houston Community Newspapers Online - News Around Town

2010-09-30T07:31:00.000-07:00

The Rose continues battle against cancer Breastcancer News Archives Houston Community Newspapers Online - News Around Town

Starting time set for annual walk against breast cancer Pasadena Citizen News Archives Houston Community Newspapers Online - News Around Town

2010-08-26T07:39:00.000-07:00

Starting time set for annual walk against breast cancer Pasadena Citizen News Archives Houston Community Newspapers Online - News Around Town
The starting line isn’t drawn yet, but the time to line up is now.

The Annual Komen Houston Race for the Cure is set for Oct. 2 and enters its 20th year as the largest foot race in Houston.

The walk is a show of support to those affected by breast cancer and raises, through entrance fees, thousands of dollars every year to go to research.

More than 32,000 participants are expected to make this year’s event another blow in the fight against a disease that impacts millions of women worldwide each year.

Recently, the Houston Affiliate of Susan Komen pledged $687,750 to the Rose, Houston’s non-profit breast cancer research and treatment center, which in 2009 served insured and uninsured women throughout the Houston area, translating to about $68,000 worth of medical and emotional services.

“The Rose and the Komen Houston Affiliate have a long history of caring for Houston women,” said Dorothy Weston Gibbons, co-founder and CEO of The Rose. “We are deeply grateful for their trust and belief in what we do. We are honored that every step of the way, the Komen Houston Affiliate has supported us.”

The Komen Houston Race for the Cure is the main fundraising event that helps organizations like the Rose to continue their services.

Gibbons said that the Houston area has the largest rate of uninsured women in the United States.

“Nearly one in three people don’t have medical coverage, and there are so few programs available for the working poor who make up half of the uninsured population.”

Opening ceremonies Oct. 2 will begin at 7:45 a.m. with the race officially starting at 8 a.m. entry fees for $30 for adults, $15 for children and $25 for survivors with an additional $5 charge for the competitive run.

To register online before Sept. 26, visit www.komen-houston.org For more information about The Rose, call 281-484-4708 or visit www.therose.org.