By Janet Francis

Attending Tift College, in Forsyth, Georgia, I first learned of and admired a former graduate of this institution known only to me as Tribble. Her reputation for fun and adventure was not only known to those who attended college with her, but was also passed on to all rookie freshmen who entered Tift College halls. It was through a mutual friend and former graduate of Tift that I learned that Tribble was actually a last name and that her first name was Nancy. Over the years, Tribble became a fixture in my life and in the lives of those with whom she developed friendships not only through college, but through her work as well. Tribble entered the teaching profession, a career path taken by many who graduated from Tift College, and was ever the teacher. In any scenario, Tribble created ‘teachable moments’ about science, cooking, and travel. Each lesson was given with gusto and quite often, much humor.

When Tribble was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she began researching the symptoms, cause and treatment. She was tireless in her research for facilities with expertise in the area of pancreatic cancer. She survived over a decade with a malignant cancer that is normally characterized by a much shorter survival period. Tribble created many humorous moments with each procedure and surgery performed to remove or reduce metastasized cancer cells. One such moment was during a radio frequency ablation of damaged liver cells when friends were urged to eat liver on her behalf.

I truly believe her passion and enthusiasm for life, her continued optimism for a cure, as well as her love of family and friends, extended her life beyond the amount of time normally ‘given’ to such patients. She exemplified love of life, as characterized by Sir Anton, Lover of Life, in the traditional Round Table Ceremony performed annually at Tift College. The qualities she exhibited during her college years followed her throughout her life. Though knighted during her senior year at Tift, she carried the essence of Sir Anton with her through every battle and to the very end.

Tribble will remain in the hearts of all those she touched – her friends, her students and her family.

The Thrill in D-Ville Annual Labor Day Road Race originated in the fall of 2009 with a small group of friends and family in Dawsonville, GA. They raised $700.00. The Second Annual event was bigger and better than the first, bringing in over $1500.00! We are looking forward to our Third Annual Thrill in D-Ville Labor Day Road Race on September 3, 2011 in an effort to raise money for the Hirshberg Foundation in the name of Nancy Faye Tribble.

By Maggie Mahoney, LACC Team Captain of Ellen’s Angels

As I sit down to reflect on my time working with the Hirshberg Foundation I am overwhelmed with many emotions. First and foremost I think of my beautiful, amazing, and inspiring, mother Ellen Mahoney, who passed away in June 2006. Her short five month battle is the reason I got involved in the fight against pancreatic cancer. I found out about the Hirshberg Foundation on the internet. In October of 2006, I created Team “Ellen’s Angels” for the LA Cancer Challenge. I thought I would fly down from San Francisco for the weekend to run it myself, but little did I know, my whole family flew out from Washington D.C. to cross the finish line with me. My mom is the reason my family, friends, and I will continue to run with Team “Ellen’s Angels” at the LA Cancer Challenge every October. I am a part of the Hirshberg Foundation to honor her memory.

“You Can Hope, Or You Can Help” is the Foundation’s motto. And it represents how my mother lived her life. She was one to take action and make the lives of the people around her, better. Even after her death, people still tell me how my mother changed their lives. This is how I hope to live my life.

The work we are doing to find a cure cannot bring my mother back but I believe our efforts can help the lives of others. This is the reason I will continue to fight. In many ways the Foundation has become my extended family. I’m working to cure this disease in honor of my mother and for all of loved ones we have lost. I will work hand and hand with you until we have a cure.

Several months ago, a tall angel walked into our offices by the name of Barry Lazar. Tragically, he had recently lost his wife Rochelle to pancreatic cancer. He found us on the internet and was ready to go into battle mode against a disease that robbed him of his love and a life built over fifty-two years. I took Barry through the Hirshberg Laboratories at UCLA, where he met several researchers who described their current projects, made possible by the support of the Hirshberg Foundation. He was impressed with the amount of work that was being done to advance this disease, but immediately said that the severity of this cancer calls for much more awareness and increased funding. Barry started by presenting us a most generous check to be used exclusively for research. He then mailed more than one hundred letters to his friends and associates promising to match any contributions they made from $200 – $1,000. To date, thanks to Barry’s efforts, over $115,000 has been raised for the Rochelle Lazar Memorial Research Fund.

I am so grateful for Barry’s energy and passion. After twelve years of fighting this battle, I almost gave up trying to get media attention and aiming to solicit the help of celebrities who may want to lend their name to our cause. Barry, entrepreneurial by nature and passionate in spirit, will not let me get complacent and challenges me regularly to insure that we amplify the urgent need of pancreatic cancer research. I feel blessed that he came in our lives.

Carl Roe passed away September 5, 2008 from complications caused by pancreatic cancer. Our goal with this fund is to raise awareness of the severity of pancreatic cancer by describing our personal experience. Our focus is to spread information about this silent but deadly disease. We want to honor this person who was so important in our lives by trying to give hope to others who will have to travel his same path. We hope to raise awareness about this disease and help raise the funds necessary to develop a better means of detection and eventually a cure. Carl was taken away too soon by a disease that does not have a symptom until well after the disease has developed. We thank everyone for your support in this fight. We will continue to support this wonderful cause until a cure has been found.

To view Carl’s story, visit: https://pancreatic.org/memorial/carlroe

By Ronnie Raper

In March of 1995 my father-in-law, Doyle Williams, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I remember my own father, Cotton Raper, saying “You and Denise (my wife) better spend all the time you can with him because old Doyle won’t be around long”. Doyle was only 51 years old. Throughout his illness I tried to comfort Doyle and my wife as best I could. Dad kept saying “poor old Doyle….just no hope”. A hospice bed was soon staged in the living room and that is where Doyle drew his last breath on March 20, 1995.

Ironically, just 12 years later Cotton began losing a severe amount of weight. At first he was some what pleased because he had always been over-weight, but he soon discovered that this weight loss was a tell tale sign of something much worse.

We didn’t give it a lot of thought at first because Cotton was a hospital veteran. He was constantly under the care of specialist due to a rare disease called Wagner’s that disabled him in 1976. It wasn’t strange to us to hear that he was sick or going to have a battery of tests performed on any given day.

Cotton had already survived two open heart surgeries in his lifetime and we felt convinced that he would fight through whatever this was.

I remember my cell-phone ringing as I got into my car a week later. It was my mom and she said “Son, I made your Daddy go to the Emergency Room. They ran some x-rays and found a mass on his pancreas. They’re not giving him any hope”. I just couldn’t believe it!! I heard those same words twelve years ago.

I noticed that Dad’s eyes were yellow by the time I arrived. Where had I seen that before? You want to believe that if you see a train bearing down on you that you can get off the tracks after the horn blows, but we couldn’t change it. Oh, how that fact ripped at my heart. I noticed there was something else different about Dad’s eyes other than the jaundice. He realized that his body, just like a past boyfriend or girlfriend, was breaking up with him. He didn’t want to die, but life was breaking up with him. On December 7, 2007 at 3:00 am, Dad drew his last breath on the hospice bed that had been staged in his living room.

Two months later, I decided that there had to be something done to help get people off the tracks of pancreatic cancer. My research led me to The Hirshberg Foundation. I was filled with hope to realize there was indeed a way to fight back and that Cotton’s fight didn’t end on that hospice bed.

Those people that knew my Dad called him Cotton, due to his blonde hair. Cotton raised a family of singers and musicians, so we decided to plan a music festival in his memory. Cotton Fest was held on September 29, 2007 on our 17 acre private property in Etowah, Tennessee. We had professional and semi-professional bands playing mainly Bluegrass, Contemporary Bluegrass, and Southern Gospel Music. The event generated $700.00 in donations for the Foundation. We plan to do much better this year by getting an earlier start. There were a lot of growing pains associated with getting our property festival-ready.  We are looking forward to The 2nd Annual Cotton-Fest which will be held on September 27, 2008. Our family and friends are working aggressively to secure enough sponsors in order to donate a 100% of the proceeds to The Hirshberg Foundation.

I am eternally grateful that there exists a foundation of hope for all those like Doyle and Cotton. This was my way of healing…knowing that their life and their fight will continue.

Editors Note: We first featured an article about Jeremy in our Summer 2003 newsletter, after the high school sophomore held his first online coin auction to raise money for our Foundation. As you will read, that was only the beginning of his devotion to our cause and to honoring his grandfather’s memory.

By Jeremy Katz

My grandfather was an aviation enthusiast, and in the summer of 1998, I inherited his passion. Standing outside his hold house in London, I saw the heavy jets on approach to Heathrow, and, combined with many recent flights, I realized that I, too, loved aviation. I finally had an interest that allowed me to get close to my grandfather, but I was only given a year and a half before he was taken from me, with so much knowledge and so many stories left unshared.

It started in 10^th grade when I did a biology research project on pancreatic cancer. Three years after my grandfather succumbed to his pancreatic cancer following a valiant battle, I finally understood what had taken him, and I wanted to do what I could to keep others from experiencing the pain and loss I felt. But, in 10^th grade, there wasn’t much that I could do. At least, not at first glance.

An avid coin collector, I turned to an online message board where I regularly post, and asked if anyone would be willing to donate coins for me to auction, with all proceeds benefiting the Hirshberg Foundation. To my amazement, donations poured in, and by the time I had finished auctioning off every piece, $1700 had been raised. A few months later, I tried my luck at another auction, and with even more success than my first auction, decided to keep running them whenever possible.

While my second and third auctions benefited other worthy causes, I came back to the Hirshberg Foundation for my fourth auction, which, held during my senior year of high school, I feared would be my last. It raised $7225.

My grandfather left this world failing to complete two things. First, he never had the opportunity to go to college, so he was never able to become an aeronautical engineer. Secondly, he was unable to defeat pancreatic cancer. Soon after arriving at MIT, I realized that I had the power to finish those two tasks for him. During MIT’s month-long January break my freshman year, I held another auction, which raised $4000. Then, this past summer, I spent my summer in Los Angeles with Agi, working at the Hirshberg labs at UCLA and watching planes at LAX in my spare time. I left Los Angeles more passionate than ever about helping the foundation.

When I returned to class this past fall as a sophomore, I began the rigorous aeronautical engineering curriculum, on track to complete one of my grandfather’s unfinished tasks. To help complete the other, I held another January auction for the Foundation, and shattered my goal for the auction by raising $7000.

Since 10^th grade, six auctions have raised over $28,000, $20,000 of which has gone to the Hirshberg Foundation. While it’s true that Agi has told me I’m crazy (in the best possible way) for doing what I’ve done, I’d like to think that I’ve just done my part to remember a great man. So long as you remember, no one is truly gone.