Posted 10:49 am Friday, May 07, 2010
Trio Brought Komen To Tyler 11 Years Ago
By MELISSA CROWE
Staff Writer
East Texans can still register to race for the cure before the Susan G. Komen 5K run/walk dashes off Saturday morning at Bergfeld Park.
Staff Writer
East Texans can still register to race for the cure before the Susan G. Komen 5K run/walk dashes off Saturday morning at Bergfeld Park.
This year marks Tyler's 11th year participating in the Susan G. Komen for the Cure and 11 years of being an affiliate with the foundation.
Three Tyler women are largely responsible for bringing the Komen Foundation to Tyler and though they passed the baton on many years ago, they are proud of the success of East Texas.
A 1998 Fort Worth Komen race inspired Anne Owens, a former Tyler resident, to get Tyler involved with the foundation.
She participated to honor her mother, a breast cancer survivor.
"I thought Tyler needed it," she said. "We didn't have anything like that in Tyler for women."
While in another part of the city, Freda Harder, a John Tyler teacher who had recently finished chemotherapy treatments, was already at work with help from Dr. Sasha Vukelja, an oncologist at Texas Oncology-Tyler, to make Tyler a Komen affiliate.
"It's a beginning of a better tomorrow," Dr. Vukelja said. "We know that fundraising from that race will help so much more in (the) progress of (fighting) breast cancer."
Ms. Harder's interest in the Komen Foundation came from an annual health fair she established at Tyler Independent School District.
She brought East Texas Medical Center, Trinity Mother Frances and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler together to provide free gallbladder ultrasounds, vision and hearing screenings, cholesterol checks and more to school district employees.
"We had three people diagnosed with glaucoma and one lady who had a hemangioma on her liver," Ms. Harder said. "There were lives saved."
Doctors at the health fair diagnosed her with breast cancer. In a whirlwind, Ms. Harder met the surgeon that afternoon, had a mastectomy the next day, then went home with a head full of questions and no one to turn to who had survived breast cancer.
"When we look back at that health fair and what this community can do with information, it's just amazing what all has happened," she said.
When Ms. Harder contacted the Komen Foundation, she found out that Mrs. Owens was working toward the same goal, and so the three women joined their efforts.
Though the three women spearheaded the task of making Tyler a Komen affiliate, now more than a decade into it, they can sit back and watch the fruits of their labor blossom.
"You find one little bitty spark of hope and you just fan it and you fan it and you fan it," Ms. Harder said. "And look what we've done with it. I needed that spark of hope when I was diagnosed, I really needed it."
Of the funds raised in Tyler for the Komen race, the community keeps 75 percent.
"It's been a great, great event for this community," Dr. Vukelja said. "It raises awareness, raises money for research and brings the community together."
One Tyler Komen board member expects more than 5,300 people to celebrate and honor the lives of men and women who have fought and are still fighting breast cancer.
Tyler's pledge program raised just under $32,000 this year, said Kristin Goodman, member at large on the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Tyler Board.
Last year, the pledge program raised $17,000, she said.
"To be almost double that is amazing," she said.
Since its conception in 1999, the Tyler Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure has awarded grants totaling more than $272,000 to local agencies to aid in the fight against breast cancer.
The grants are responsible for providing about 5,000 mammograms and more than $1 million in services including breast diagnostic services for those unable to afford them, retreats for breast cancer patients, rehabilitation products, forums for underserved and at-risk populations and genetic testing and evaluation for high-risk breast cancer patients, according to the Komen website.
Last year, the Komen Foundation spent $60 million in scientific research to continue its multimillion dollar Promise Grants program and spent $103 million for education and breast health services nationwide. Since 1992, the foundation has invested more than $1.5 billion in breast cancer research.
Ms. Harder dreams of the statistics of East Texas women who find their support groups through the Komen Foundation, of women whose lives were saved because of the race and the organizations that used the funds to make medical advances in cancer treatments.
She and Dr. Vukelja agree the foundation's funding will someday stamp out breast cancer.
"One of these days we're going to eliminate this disease, and we'll talk about it like smallpox or polio," Dr. Vukelja said. "I think we're so close."
Race day registration is $35. The 5K co-ed run/walk begins at 8 a.m. Saturday at the Bergfeld Park and the one-mile run/walk starts at 9 a.m.
