Promise Me (27 page)
Authors: Nancy G. Brinker
“Well, I applaud your enthusiasm, Mrs. Brinker,” he said diplomatically. “We certainly do appreciate your support, and I assure you, we’re very conscientious about how we distribute funds raised in our name.”
“Yes, absolutely. That’s why this is such a perfect partnership. You’ve got the administrative machinery in place, and you’re in the best position to help us figure out the clinical trials and research specifically dealing with breast cancer.”
“That’s not how we do things, Mrs. Brinker. If we did a breast cancer project, we’d have to do a lymphoma project and a pancreatic project—we don’t single out one disease.”
“But breast cancer is the number-two killer of women. I’m sure you know that better than I do. But thirty years ago, one in twenty women were diagnosed with breast cancer, now it’s one in thirteen. Ten years from now …”
“Yes, I’m familiar with those numbers,” he said.
“When people start hearing about this, there’s going to be a groundswell of great concern. There’s going to be a real outcry.”
“There should be,” he nodded gravely. “But what experience has taught us—frankly, Mrs. Brinker, it won’t work. People are receptive to general messages about cancer, but breast cancer is a very private matter for the patient and not something people want to see up on a billboard.”
“But women
need
to see it on a billboard. They need to know it’s out there and it’s okay to talk about it. We have so little idea of what this thing is until it’s in our lives in a very big way, and then—well, then you’re in crisis mode. Then talking time is over. You need to access information immediately and be ready to take action.”
“You’re right about that. We’ve created some excellent brochures and booklets, and of course, we have our Reach to Recovery program.”
“Yes, all that is terrific. I so appreciate everything you’ve done. But my vision for my sister’s foundation …”
“Yes,” he said, glancing at his watch. “As I said, you can be sure that whatever funds you raise will be put to very good use. We can certainly earmark donations for research related to breast cancer. A wonderful group of ladies in Houston supplied the Reach to Recovery gift bags today. We’d be happy to send some with you for your tea party.”
“Actually, it’s an organizational …” I bit my lip and offered my hand. “Thanks so much for your time. I truly do appreciate the work you’ve done.”
Over the next thirty years, this gentleman and I laughed a lot about
that conversation. Often in the context of Susan G. Komen for the Cure handing the American Cancer Society a check for $5 or $6 million. He was a great man, the ACS is a great organization, and I still believe in the importance of working collaboratively. We’re happy to fund projects within the ACS and within other organizations—some of whom turn around and criticize us in the media, along with the critics who turn around and copy us. I don’t care; as long as they’re providing meaningful help for women with breast cancer, I support them.
And I have to wonder what would have happened if the response from the ACS had been different, if they’d taken us in. Or if any of the other hospitals, foundations, or institutions I approached had taken us in. Things would have turned out very differently, and I rather like the way things have turned out, aside from the fact that I really had planned to be done by now. I genuinely thought it would take ten years. The vaccine would be announced. The bells would ring. The factories would shut down for the day, and mothers would cover their faces and cry the way they did the day polio became an anachronism.
I had told Suzy, “I promise. Even if it takes the rest of my life …”
I had no inkling that it actually would.
When I told Norm my plan to find an umbrella organization had met with defeat, he could tell I was feeling stung.
“Did you really listen to what people were saying to you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “But they’re saying a breast cancer–specific foundation isn’t viable. And they seem to assume this is a whim—like I’m dabbling in this to keep myself busy between shopping sprees.”
“That’s understandable, based on the information they have.”
“But they’re wrong!”
“Prove it,” he said with that tilted smile.
I invited about two dozen ladies to the first organizational tea for what would become the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation on July 22, 1982. Ten or twelve attended, every one of them a smart, capable, fabulous woman who has my undying gratitude. I think all of us were there because we’d lost someone we loved to breast cancer. It was personal. The conversation was committed and energized, a deep breath of fresh air after all the nay-saying I’d been listening to.
We had a little over $200, which I’d squirreled away from my grocery
budget. Someone brought a typewriter I could borrow. And I had my shoebox.
I
t made sense to have our first big event at Willow Bend because I knew the place like the back of my hand and figured I could get the biggest bang for our buck there.
“You always want to look bigger than you are,” Norman sagely advised.
This happening was all about launching our tiny foundation in a very big way. Maximum visibility at minimum expense, diving for the deepest possible pockets. I had my shoebox of names, plus all the goodwill and the Rolodex fodder I’d built through years of helping others with their fundraising efforts. Annette Strauss, a city council member who went on to become mayor of Dallas, co-chaired the event with her charming daughter Nancy, and they had quite a shoebox of their own. Soon we had RSVPs for a very promising lawn party at the polo grounds.
I wanted so much for this to be a lovely, lovely day. I envisioned the women stepping out of their cars into the glorious sunshine of a classic Dallas autumn. We took great pains to decorate the place in a way that evoked elegance, femininity, and grace—my way of bringing Suzy’s spirit to the place. Pink crepe paper streamers fluttered in the breeze below tufted pink paper roses. The porch rails and patios were festooned and pleated within an inch of their lives. The land once occupied by the polo club has been absorbed into the city suburbs now, but back then it was out in the country, a fairly substantial drive from the upscale neighborhoods in town. The parking lot was large but not paved. The dining room was spacious enough for the Sunday crowd, but we were going for the garden-party feel with attendees strolling about the beautifully green grounds.
Almost everything we said about our plans for the day included phrases like “as long as it doesn’t rain” or “assuming the weather is on our side.” Knock wood. Salt over the shoulder. Fingers crossed. It really wasn’t a stretch to assume it would be lovely, because most Dallas autumn days feature the stunning cloudless blue sky the camera zooms in on during the opening theme of the television show
Dallas
.
Of course, speaking the very words
lawn party
is probably the most effective rain dance ever devised. We should dispatch to every drought-stricken area on Earth a contingent of well-heeled Junior Leaguers in white shoes and wide-brimmed hats with instructions to stage an elaborate afternoon social under the dependable sun. Storm clouds will roll in. Guaranteed. That morning, it looked like the entire Gulf of Mexico had evaporated into the atmosphere and was pouring down on us. Standing at my kitchen window, watching the sky fall, I felt Norman’s hand on my shoulder.
“You okay?”
“No one’s going to drive all the way out there in this downpour,” I said. “We’re going to have to hustle out our husbands, kids, dogs … anybody we can get. I feel sick thinking about the money we laid out for catering, flowers.…”
“I thought you got most of that donated.”
“Well, it cost
them
money. And it cost us a favor we could have used on a better day.”
“On the other hand,” he said, “don’t overlook the opportunity here. If people don’t come out for the event, you can blame the weather. It’s a freebie. You’d be able to try a different tack without looking like you got thrown off the horse.”
He was good, I’m telling you. Norman Brinker was really good.
Heartened, I put myself together in a tailored pink suit, did my makeup, got ready to meet whatever the day had in store.
“Okay, Suzy. Let’s go do this.”
Walking out the door into the impenetrable humidity, I could physically feel my hair swelling like a sea urchin. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but the drive to Willow Bend was treacherous and slow. The radio jabbered about the freak storm, telling people to stay home. Thanks a lot. The only vehicles in the parking lot belonged to the food service workers who’d braved the weather out of loyalty to Norman, I suppose. Our sodden crepe paper decorations dangled heavily from the front porch. Some of the pink streamers had been beaten down and lay in squiggles like earthworms on the flagstone patio. But my wonderful team of volunteers arrived on time, dashing through the rain with umbrellas flapping and
hats pulled down over their ears, and we all gamely went about putting the finishing touches on our preparations.
A little while before the luncheon was scheduled to begin, I stepped out onto the porch. The rain had let up for the moment, but the gray sky hunkered low over the old turkey farm. It was quiet except for an occasional distant whinny from the stables. The outbuildings were all but invisible through the mist. Strangled bunting had blown down onto the polo field.
“Suzy, I’m sorry. I said I wouldn’t fail you, and I have. This is a disaster.”
With tears burning my eyes, I tramped across the driveway and minced out onto the lawn, my heels poking through the soggy Saint Augustine grass as I made my way out onto the field to pick up the trashed decorations. Mud sucked at my white pumps with every step. Every time I stooped to retrieve a piece of wet bunting, dots spattered my suit. It didn’t matter now. Thunder growled, and I started weeping.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Suzy and I were supposed to do it together.
Every once in a while, especially during the first few years she was gone, the loss of my sister hit me with a fresh vengeance, pulled a string deep in my chest, and unraveled me from the inside out. I stood there on the polo field and sobbed hard, wrenching sobs.
“I’m
sorry, Suzy, I’m sorry
.…”
When I could breathe again, I straightened my shoulders and cleared my throat. It was time to go in, thank people, and send them home with plastic bags and foil packets of petit fours and crudités. My ruined shoes made a slurping sound when I tried to move my feet. Suzy would have been hysterical at that, but because I couldn’t hear her laughter, I started crying again, and then I was laughing, because Suzy would have known anything this tragic had to be hilarious.
I waded a few yards across the field, just to smell the wet grass and storm clouds.
A spark caught my eye on the horizon. What looked like a firefly. And then another and another, flickering, appearing and disappearing at the smudged hemline where the meadow met the glowering sky.
Headlights, I realized. Lots of them.
Pickup trucks and town cars, mom-style minivans, a small but steady trickle of vehicles wound its way up the country lane and through the gate, dropping passengers at the clubhouse, then wallowing out to the muddy parking area, sliding into crooked rows, wheels spinning in the mire. Dozens of cars turned into hundreds, a steady stream of headlights emerging from the mist. It reminded me of the stream of firefly headlights wending their way to our front porch in search of Suzy. Just like that bevy of boys, they came because they loved her. Maybe not my Suzy; none of these people had known her. They each had their own Suzy—or they were the Suzy for someone else.
I hurried back to the clubhouse, pausing to stuff the soggy bunting in a trash can as I dashed up to the porch. A pretty young girl from the local paper stood there.
“Looks like you struck a chord.”
“I guess we did,” I said, dabbing at my eye makeup, scuffing my ruined shoes on a welcome mat.
“My only personal experience with breast cancer was with my mother’s best friend. She lived a block away, and no one knew she had breast cancer until she died. You just didn’t speak of it. This is amazing.” She nodded toward the wallowed parking lot. “You do know this is amazing, right?”
“
Yes
. I’m—I’m definitely amazed. I’m just so grateful they came.”
And they kept coming.
J
UST SIXTEEN
and already talking about majoring in business, Brooks Byers was about to learn one of Norman’s prime Brinker Principles: “Be persistent. Keep knocking on doors.”
I first learned this lesson from my father. Even as a child, when someone told me no, all I heard was the first two letters of “not yet.” But Daddy, along with Boppie and my industrious uncles, also taught me that this is a good quality only when used for good instead of greed. In the ethical practice of business, the
why
of a deal is more important than the
how much
. The most powerful lesson every mentee learns is how to care for others. What you get is vanishingly unimportant compared with who you bring along.
In the fall of 2009, Brooks approached department stores in his hometown, Flower Mound, Texas, requesting permission to set up a table and wrap gifts during the Christmas season as a way to raise money for breast cancer research. He organized a list of stores, called around and collected the names of all the managers, typed up neatly addressed business letters, got into his church clothes, and went out to hand-deliver the polite requests.
“One just said no without a reason, one never responded, some said it was against store policy, somebody said a group in the past ruined it for everybody. The manager at the Christian bookstore was pretty nasty. That one was a surprise.”
Brooks’s dad, a marketing executive, told him, “When you’re pitching, if you get five out of a hundred, that’s successful.”
“I only needed one,” says Brooks. “I didn’t expect it to be that hard.”
He got his yes from Susan Held, manager of a local Belk Department Store.
“She was really excited,” says Brooks. “Came down two or three times to check on us on Black Friday. The people who worked there were a lot more customer service-oriented in general. And a lot happier. To me, that says she’s a great manager.”
He roped in a few friends, and they wrapped gifts every weekend from Thanksgiving until Christmas, raising about $500 for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, about the same amount he’d raised for SGK that summer with a tennis clinic for neighborhood kids. Susan Held speculated that perhaps he got the negative responses initially because breast cancer seems like an unusual interest for a teenage boy. She suspected Brooks had a pretty solid
why
.
His great-grandmother died of breast cancer when he was two, but Brooks was seven when his grandmother died. He remembers. “Even when she was in chemo, she’d walk with me when I rode my bike or get down on the floor and play.”
Brooks was fifteen when his mother was diagnosed.
His little sister, Annemarie, was eight, a blossoming ballerina.
“I didn’t want to tell him right away,” says Christy Baily-Byers, a communications teacher at Southern Methodist University. “Brooks was born going on forty. He’s so responsible, such a caretaker by nature, I didn’t want him to take too much of this on himself. I was determined the disease wouldn’t define me. I kept teaching through it all—tamoxifen, Lupron, Taxotere, Cytoxin. Sometimes my back hurt so badly, Annemarie had to dress me, but I went to work. We ate a lot of takeout. I was too fatigued to do errands, so Brooks drove me around with his learner’s permit.”
Christy scheduled chemo around the family vacation to Europe that summer.
“We’d been planning it for a long time, and I wasn’t sure how many more family trips there’d be,” Christy says, but then she rushes to qualify, “because the kids grow up so fast.”
She lost her hair in Paris. Annemarie went with her to the wig shop and charmed the French salesladies, dancing around in a bouffant do.
With a strong family history of breast cancer, Christy had done her homework. One of the regular guest speakers in her classroom was SGK communications specialist Melissa Anderson. Christy had herself tested
for the BRCA genes, and the results were negative, but her oncologist cautioned that we’ve only just begun to understand other genetic factors. Some scientists think the age at diagnosis may drop with each generation in some families with hereditary cancer, and there does seem to be a pattern in Christy’s family.
“My grandmother was in her seventies. My mom was fifty-six. I was forty-three.…” Christy looks over her shoulder at Annemarie. “I try not to go there in my head. I don’t want her to grow up with a cloud over her, so I won’t talk to her about it until some point in the future. Meanwhile, we do every little thing that might help. I’ve read and read. I’m careful to avoid hormones in meat or poultry. She’s in ballet. They say exercise might help. Brooks is determined to do whatever he can to help find the answer before she gets there.”
It’s possible, if not probable, that Christy has passed on to Annemarie a genetic predisposition for breast cancer. But it’s a solid certainty that she and her husband have also passed to their children life lessons in perseverance, grace under pressure, pragmatic optimism, and vigilance when it comes to caring for themselves and each other. Looking back, I see my father’s guiding wisdom in every pivotal decision of my life. When he was living, he was always there, nudging me to ask the right questions instead of handing me the answers. His belief in me was unshakable, and the example he set guides me still.
LaSalle Leff all, another towering mentor in my life—and the lives of thousands of others—likes to quote Henry Brooks Adams: “A teacher affects an eternity.”
As LaSalle was growing up in the segregated South, his godmother’s husband was the only black physician in his hometown, but his parents and teachers instilled in him potent messages of purpose and possibility. As a black student in the 1940s, Howard University was one of only two medical schools open to him, but he graduated first in his class in 1952 and went on to become president of the American Cancer Society, the American College of Surgeons, and the American Society of Surgical Oncologists. He’s taught 5,000 of the 7,500 physicians who’ve graduated from Howard.
When LaSalle was about the age Annemarie Byers is now, he found a bird with a broken wing.
“Why don’t you try to put a splint on it?” his father suggested.
With shades of the exactitude that would one day make him a great surgeon, LaSalle carefully splinted the bird’s wing and fed it bread crumbs and drops of water for several days. His eyes still shine when he tells how it eventually grew strong and flew away.
A beautiful metaphor for both medicine and mentoring.
Brooks Byers, with his innate sixteen-going-on-forty understanding of all this, will prosper in business school, I predict. But more than I enjoy imagining how far he’ll fly, I relish the thought of those he’ll take with him. He’ll go out into the world and build on the lessons he’s learned from his father and mother and other mentors who’ve shown him the way. And if all our vigilant prayers are heard, his little sister will grow up, grow old, and teach her granddaughters to dance.
