How it started

On June 19, 2009, my husband Ray was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer at the age of 56. After the initial feeling of hitting a brick wall. I had never heard of this cancer. Men don't like talking about it. I am also the mom of four sons. He had no family history. Ray is the oldest of three sons. The only thing we can put some of the pieces together on how this might have occurred. When he graduated he entered into the United States Air Force. He joined as a Firefighter and then cross-trained into Weather. In the military, you are exposed to many chemicals and herbicides which have proven to be harmful over time. One of the major chemicals that was used in the military was Agent Orange. This was mainly used in Vietnam. Though my husband was never in Vietnam he has been denied any compensation from the military. I did start doing research about Agent Orange and did find out that many of the Bases he was stationed at either had Agent Orange stored at them or was contaminated with other chemicals and herbicides. That explains a lot. When we started having children I did not know that our children would be born with birth defects. We have four sons as I mentioned. Our oldest son was born with a hole in his heart, which thankfully closed up with our surgery. our second son was born with a learning disability, and webbed toes on both feet. The third son no real issues, our fourth son was born with three heart murmurs, bad ears that caused hearing loss. They all have coped with everything pretty well. My husband was married before me and had three children with his previous wife. His first son was born with a hole in his heart that took his life at eight days old. His first daughter was born premature, the second daughter was born healthy. So out of seven children and two wives, there seems to be an issue there.

Men who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer will not talk about it or let their loved ones talk about it. I got lucky that Ray doesn't mind me sharing my story. I knew I was not going to sit back and do nothing. So I started advocating for prostate cancer awareness and education. When I started advocating with ZERO The End Of Prostate Cancer in 2012, we attended our first Summit in Washington, D.C. On the last day of the Summit, we head to Capitol Hill and meet with our elected officials from our states. This was my first time being in D.C. We are all dropped off for our scheduled meetings for the day. We had our first meeting with Senator Sherrod Brown at 8;30am, but at 8:15am I took a Spill on Capitol Hill and broke my let. The Capitol police wanted to call for the medics to take me to the hospital. I said no. We have meetings and I am not going to miss them they are too important to me. So they called for a wheelchair and off we went. We were a little bit late to Senator Brown's Coffee meeting. I shared my story. Please keep the funding and research in the Fiscal Year Budget. We had five meetings that day and I attended all five with a broken leg. People saw me from the Summit and said I was dedicated to keeping going to the meetings. Our first year advocating the budget was 80 Million dollars. Last year the funding budget was 110 Million.  Sadly COVID-19 has canceled the Summit in Washington, D.C. for 2021. I do hope we are able to return to in-person Summits in the future. I miss the friends we have made at the Summit. We can still keep in touch through social media but it's not the same.