CITY & REGION

www.thehawkeye.com
THE HAWK EYE
!" BURLINGTON, IOWA
Sunday • September 22, 2013
3A
CITY & REGION
Nurses gather
after 50 years
to remember
They’ve since retired or
left the profession, but
they look back on time
in Burlington program
with fondness.
By WILLIAM SMITH
[email protected]
John Lovretta/The Hawk Eye
Allison Sturgill, captain of team Beads for Boobies!, writes notes for her “Stick it to Cancer” voodoo dolls at the annual
American Cancer Society Relay for Life of Des Moines County Saturday at Great River Medical Center in West Burlington.
Allison grew up in Burlington and moved to New Orleans after high school and embraced the lifestyle there. After she was
diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago, Sturgill moved back to Burlington to be with family.
Walking for life
Annual Relay for Life
looks to raise $87,000
for cancer research.
By WILLIAM SMITH
[email protected]
A
ngela Hunstad’s
T-shirt summed up
her struggle against
cancer in two simple
sentences.
“Yes, they’re fake. My real
ones tried to kill me.”
Hunstad of Burlington was
diagnosed with breast cancer
in 2011 and underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy. Though it was quite a
shock to lose her breasts and
her hair, Hunstad took the disease head-on. After she went
into remission, her breasts
were restored through reconstructive surgery in Iowa City.
“I was 38, and I found a
lump and wasn’t old enough
yet for mammograms, ” she
said. “They took out 20 lymph
nodes. I embraced it. My
hardest struggle was losing
my hair. I had long, beautiful
blond hair.”
Hunstad spoke about her
struggles during the survivor
ceremony at the annual American Cancer Society Relay for
Life of Des Moines County,
which kicked off Saturday
afternoon at Great River Medical Center and lasted through
until midnight. More than 300
people from 24 relay teams
continually walked the paved
track around the GRMC Lake,
raising money for ongoing cancer research.
Though Hunstad was new
to the event, she embraced
it as heartily as her cancer
struggle and decided to join
the Relay committee. She figured it was the least she could
do after the American Cancer
Society provided her with a
wig.
“Without Relay, I wouldn’t
have been able to have
that, because my insurance
wouldn’t pay for it. They would
pay for fake boobs, but they
wouldn’t pay for the hair,” she
said with a laugh.
Hunstad was walking with
the Think Pink team, which
had set up a large pink tent
and a boxing ring with pink
John Lovretta/The Hawk Eye
Elizabeth Talley wears Marvin Linder’s firefighter gear in the annual American Cancer Society
Relay for Life of Des Moines County Saturday at Great River Medical Center in West Burlington. Linder, with the Stronghurst, Ill., Fire Department, lost his wife, Leslie, to metastatic
breast cancer and walked as a member of team The CASE Crusaders and planned to wear his
firefighting gear later in the day for three laps around GRMC Lake.
ropes. Inside the boxing ring
was a 5-foot-tall demon that
looked like it came straight
from a Halloween display. A
sign that simply read “Cancer”
hung around its neck.
The display made its debut
during the Mediapolis Town
and Country Days parade last
month, and the demon was
helpless against its opponents
inside the ring.
“The girls were boxing cancer. They were beating cancer,”
said Think Pink team member
Denise Rice.
Rice also sits on the Relay
committee and was excited
about the changes this year.
For the last few years, the
Relay for Life was a nighttime
event that started at 6 p.m. and
lasted until 6 a.m. the following day. This year, the event
started at noon and went until
midnight.
“A lot of people didn’t like
(the change), but they were
finding out that a lot of teams
weren’t spending the night.
Basically six out of the 25 or
so teams were spending the
night. So we’re trying this to
get some families out in the
afternoon,” Rice said.
A cupcake party celebrated
the 100th anniversary of the
American Cancer Society later
that afternoon, and then the
teams were busy selling gift
baskets, exotic trips and just
about everything imaginable
during a silent auction.
Many of the teams started
setting up their tents at 9 a.m.,
basking in the morning chill
that replaced the miserable
heat that plagued last year’s
walk. The Relay was moved
from August to September this
year, and that was a change
nearly everyone enjoyed.
“It’s not too hot. It’s great.
It’s a perfect day,” said Patty
Walz, who was walking with
the Walgreens team.
New to the event this year
was the team Beads for Boobies!, which walked in support
of Allison Sturgill. Though she
grew up in Burlington, Sturgill
moved to New Orleans after
high school and embraced the
lifestyle there. After she was
diagnosed with breast cancer
two years ago, Sturgill moved
back to Burlington to be with
family. The cancer since has
spread into her hips and her
spine, and many of her friends
and family flocked to the
Relay to show their support.
That included her mother’s
boyfriend, Burlington resident
Fred Jaeger.
“They didn’t give her this
much time, but she’s doing
really well. She’s fighting it the
best she can. I’m showing support for her and everyone else
who has this dreaded disease,”
Jaeger said.
Sturgill’s team sported a
Mardi Gras theme and even
sold hand-made voodoo dolls
that came straight from New
Orleans. Sturgill’s longtime
friend, Ryan Miller, couldn’t
wait to get on the track.
“It’s going to be a beautiful
day,” he said.
Kierstan Peck, spokesperson for the American Cancer
Society, also was excited
about the time change, but she
won’t know how well it went
until its over. If participants
prefer the overnight schedule,
it easily could return next year.
“We’ll have to wait and see,”
Peck said. “Some teams really
loved the overnight. We’ll
make that decision next year.”
The target goal for this
year’s walk was $87,000, and
$67,000 of that was raised
before the event started.
Their 50th anniversary
reunion just happened to be
their first.
More than a dozen nurses
who were a part of the longdefunct Mercy Hospital nursing
program in Burlington reunited
Saturday, sharing stories of
where their lives have taken
them. Since the nursing program shut down before they
were set to graduate in 1963,
the women were separated a
year early and had to find different places to finish their
schooling.
Mercy Hospital was a fixture
in Burlington long before Great
River Medical Center, once
occupying the River Park Place
building on North Hill. Reta
Saylor of Cedar Rapids still
remembered the first day she
set foot on the nursing floor.
“It was a whole new ball
game for me. I’m sure most of
you felt the same way,” she said.
“The first day you walked up to
that new floor and didn’t know
anybody, and you’re like, ‘What
am I doing here?’ But it all
worked out.”
The women spent the
morning at the Phelps House
Museum, perusing a new medical display that listed every
hospital in Burlington’s history.
That includes the Burlington
Protestant Hospital, which
shut down in 1898; the Burlington Hospital, which ran from
1898 to 1975; and Mercy Hospital, which existed from 1893
to 1969. There’s also the Burlington Medical Center, which
existed in the River Park Place
building from 1973 to 2000, the
old Klein Hospital, which was
established in 1963, and Great
River Medical Center, which is
still going strong.
After the history lesson, the
old classmates grabbed dinner
at Peaches Cafe & Steakhouse
so they could catch up.
“It’s just amazing what a difference 50 years makes, and
yet, it doesn’t,” Saylor said.
Mary Carroll of Cedar Rapids has worked a number of
nursing jobs over the years and
has fond memories of her time
in Pueblo, Colo.
“We had a fabulous experience, because we worked with
the county health nurse who
took care of the migrant (American) Indian workers,” she said.
During her final years before
retirement, Carroll worked as a
nurse at Keokuk Steel Castings.
“They had big cauldrons full
of hot metal. I took care of a lot
of people with bad burns and
took steel out of guys’ eyes,”
she said.
Mary Jean Kasher of Omaha,
Neb., eventually went home and
got married, working as a parttime nurse for 29 years before
a conglomerate took over the
hospital she was working at
and fired her. She went on to
find other employment, never
forgetting her fellow nurses.
“I just appreciate seeing
everybody here. I’m so happy,”
she said.
Katherine Brush of Urbandale went on to marry her boyfriend, and they’re coming up on
their 50th wedding anniversary
next month. Ironically enough,
one of her earliest assignments
was to work on her husband,
who needed his appendix taken
out. She respectfully bowed out
of that operation.
“I couldn’t do that as a good
Mercy nurse,” she said, eliciting
laughter from the room.
Brush worked for Mercy
Hospital in Davenport for six
months, but life soon got in the
way.
“We had our babies right
away. Three in three years,” she
said.
Though many of the ladies
are retired or out of nursing
now, they know their legacy
will carry on. Carroll has a
grandson and a granddaughter
who want to become nurses.
“You know, it just keeps on
moving,” she said.
John Lovretta/The Hawk Eye
From left, Kathryn Brush of Urbandale; Barb Mueller of West
Point; and Mary Jean Kasher of Omaha, Neb., look through
an old Mercy Hospital scrapbook during a visit to the Medical
Memories display on the third floor of the Phelps House Museum
by a group of the Mercy Hospital’s nursing program students
having their 50-year reunion Saturday in Burlington. The nurses
went to school at Mercy in 1963, but once it closed down, the
class had to split up and finish their studies elsewhere.
One last motorcycle ride for hospice patient
Avid rider Rick Hopkins
given his last wish.
By WILLIAM SMITH
[email protected]
MOUNT PLEASANT —
Nobody was happier than Rick
Hopkins Saturday afternoon.
Dressed head-to-toe in biking
leathers, Hopkins, 57, was going
on what likely will be the last
motorcycle ride of his life.
“To me, this is God’s gift to
Rick,” his sister, Darcey Hummell, said.
Hopkins is confined to a
wheelchair and is under HCI
Hospice care at Mount Pleasant’s Arbor Court nursing home.
He gets weaker every day due
to his failing kidneys, but in his
heart, he’s still a biker. Hummell,
who makes her home in Mount
Pleasant, said Hopkins’ condition is related to chemotherapy
and radiation treatments he
underwent 25 years ago to beat
cancer.
“This long afterwards, the
doctors said the body will shut
down,” Hummell said. “He chose
John Lovretta/The Hawk Eye
Rick Hopkins, who is confined to a wheelchair and is under HCI
Hospice care at Mount Pleasant’s Arbor Court nursing home, is
secured to a handicapped-accessible sidecar by Larry Meador of
Lanark, Ill., who had a sidecar attached for his son, Josh, when he
was injured in an accident that left him paralyzed from the chest
down, on Saturday in front of the Mount Pleasant nursing home.
not to stop anything that’s happening now.”
Hopkins’ voice barely rose
above a whisper Saturday afternoon, but he had no problem
indicating it was time to go.
His right arm rolled his wheel-
chair right up to the back of the
handicapped-accessible sidecar
awaiting him, causing his wife,
Larinda Hopkins, and daughter, Brandy Hopkins, to erupt in
happy tears.
“It’s what he wants,” said Lar-
inda, who also was fully clad in
her bike leathers.
The events that led to Rick’s
last ride were just too coincidental to be happenstance. About
a half-dozen of employees with
HCI Hospice Care Services are
avid bikers, and when Hopkins noticed nurse Kim Verrips
had bandages on her arm, he
asked her what happened. She
explained it was a case of road
rash that resulted from having
to lay down her bike.
The two instantly clicked.
Rick is a lifelong biker himself,
and he shared his desire to go
on one more motorcycle ride
before it was too late.
“We do a lot of wishes for our
patients. We took an 83-year-old
lady on a hot-air balloon ride.
We took a World War II veteran
on a plane ride. It just depends
on what wish they want to do,”
Verrips said.
Since Hopkins requires the
support of his wheelchair, it
looked like his wish might be a
bit more difficult to fulfill than
most.
Then Verrips saw exactly
what her patient needed at a
motorcycle rally in Savannah,
Ill.
“I was talking with my friend,
Vicki, about how we would like
to make a hospice patient’s
wish come true, and at that very
moment, Larry pulled up on his
bike,” she said.
Larry Meador, who lives three
hours away in Lanark, Ill., paid to
have a handicapped-accessible
sidecar attached to his 1998 Harley Davidson Classic four years
ago. His 25-year-old son, Josh,
was paralyzed from the chest
down in an automobile accident
before that, but the accident
didn’t deter Josh’s love for biking. It wasn’t long before Larry
found someone who could custom build a handicapped-accessible sidecar, which includes a
foldable ramp and straps to keep
the wheelchair in place. The
dimensions for the sidecar — 52
inches long by 30 inches wide —
were a perfect fit.
“(Josh) still lights up when
he gets on it,” his mother, Lori
Meador, said.
Larry didn’t hesitate to lend
his services when Verrips
approached him with Hop-
kins’ wish, and the ride quickly
turned into a media event that
attracted family, friends and
cyclists from the ABATE District 14 motorcycle club — the
same club Hopkins is a part
of. Hopkins’ sons, Josh and
Jacob, rode their bikes all the
way from their home in Sioux
City for the event, looking like
younger, mirror images of their
father.
“If it wasn’t for hospice, we
would never see this come true,”
Brandy Hopkins said with tears
in her eyes.
Fulfilling final wishes isn’t
unusual for hospice services
and often means the world to the
patients and their families. Amy
Burkhart, community liaison for
Great River Hospice in Burlington, said the staff is constantly
organizing events to meet endof-life goals. Some recently fulfilled wishes included eating at
McDonald’s, going to a Cubs and
Cardinals game, a trip to Florida
and a baptism in the Great River
Hospice House sauna.
“I keep a list of bucket list
items,” Burkhart said.