Category: Champion Spotlight

Barbara and Norm Berven’s love story began in an unexpected way: after they both experienced losses due to cancer.  Barbara lost her first husband, Bernie, to multiple myeloma in 2008. Norm’s first wife, Stella, was a good friend of Barbara and supported her through both her first husband’s diagnosis and after he passed. Later, when…

Like many Gilda’s Club volunteers and supporters, Lisa has a personal connection to cancer. Her mom is a two-time breast cancer survivor, but before her mother’s diagnosis, her family experienced childhood cancer. Her younger brother Jeffrey was diagnosed with brain cancer when he was just 9 years old and Lisa was 11.  “My family had…

Like many of our supporters and volunteers, Kathleen Kelm has been personally touched by cancer. Her mother was diagnosed with childhood cancer back in 1935. Back then, the treatment for cancer was to place radium directly onto her cancerous lump. “That was what they did back then,” Kathleen explains.  “There were no support systems,” Kathleen…