Giving it all you’ve got

From the minute I first met her in 1983, it was clear to me that there were no half-steps for Faith Fancher. Whatever life tossed in her path, she took in full stride. Faith experienced life with gusto; no half smiles, no crocodile tears. She laughed loudly and easily, flashing her sparkling, white teeth. She cried with heavy, heaving sobs and flashing eyes. She said “I love you” often and easily, and clearly meant it. One always felt she was fully engaged in the moment, whatever moment that happened to be. 

These qualities made her good at her job: interviewing people for the local TV news, asking people to answer the most personal questions while they were smack in the middle of their own tragedies and disasters such as the Oakland Hills fire or the Loma Prieta Earthquake. She genuinely loved people and she loved hearing and telling their stories. You could say this was because of her Southern roots; she always had a natural knack for keeping it real. But for Faith, reality struck like lightning, like one of the tragedies and disasters she had covered, one day in 1997.

In 2003, Faith became one of the millions of women who have lost their lives to breast cancer. Her journey was a very public one. But of course the entire journey was conducted in the public eye, since for most of her too-brief life she had been a television reporter, working for 20 years at KTVU-TV in Oakland and 10 years previously at CNN and NPR, among other media outlets.
I still remember the telephone call: her doctor had just confirmed that the lump she discovered in her breast was malignant. Yes, she had cancer, but my friend Faith could not accept that a radical mastectomy was the answer—not for her. Yes, she was vain, proud of her looks and in love with her dashing, handsome husband. Like many women, she just couldn’t imagine facing her future while being “disfigured”, as she called it. I begged her to consider the more radical surgical option, to ensure she would be able to live—and love—long into the future.
I told her the story of a 32-year-old woman whom I had met years earlier while working on a story about the choices women faced back in the early 1970’s. This particular woman was alone in California and didn’t want to “worry” her family back home by sharing her sad news. Like Faith, she was young and attractive, and she decided against any surgical intervention at all. Within a year she had lost her life to breast cancer. Faith and I shed a few tears over the phone, thinking about the example of that young woman, then we ended our conversation, leaving Faith to consider her care options.

KTVU-TV reporter Faith Fancher

during her six-year struggle with breast cancer

When Faith’s doctor later informed her that her strain of cancer was a very aggressive one, she took the plunge. She decided to undergo the first of her seven surgeries and of course, she took all of us along with her through her Emmy Award-winning television reports. It was a wild ride. Faith lost her hair to chemotherapy, but she kept on working, exposing her cute, shiny, bald head to the public for the first time, telling her story on television, radio and in countless personal appearances, educating the general public and comforting hundreds of other women as they fought their own, very personal battles with the disease. We watched her hair re-grow and saw the sassiness return to her style as she cheered for all of her “warrior sisters”, her beloved, fellow breast cancer survivors. For them, she was one of their sisterhood, a heroine in their midst.

The very small club of women who work in Bay Area broadcast news formed an organization spearhead by Faith’s good friend Pamela Mays McDonald. We called ourselves Friends of Faith. In her life, and through her death, Faith did what we all want to do: she made a difference by giving it all she had to give, giving it all until she had nothing more to give. Now, six years after her death, the group continues the battle to raise awareness about breast cancer detection and raise money in her name, solely to help low-income, uninsured and underinsured women in need.  

She said it and wrote it often and easily, and she clearly meant it.

The death rate for breast cancer is declining, especially for women with higher incomes. But the day-to-day journey for survivors, especially poor, minority, immigrant and homeless women, is a tough one—both physically and psychologically. You can help. Here’s how:

Next Saturday, August 22, Friends of Faith will host the 5th Annual Faith Fancher Breast Cancer Challenge 5K Fun Run/Walk at Lake Merritt in Oakland. Join me and many of Faith’s friends in the media, as we give it all we’ve got to raise funds at this annual fundraising event. It’s going to be fun, with a great group of friendly people, healthy snacks and a soulful closing concert by Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir. 

If you can’t join us, take a moment now to make an online contribution—any amount, no matter how small, will be appreciated by our struggling clientele. The plight of fifty million uninsured Americans is a national disgrace. Faith Fancher had a big enough heart to do something about it, even as she struggled daily with the on-again, off-again roller coaster of metastatic cancer. Won’t you help, too?

 

For more information about Friends of Faith (a 501c3 charitable organization), check out its website.

To make a donation, click here:

Register to join the walk here: 

 

To volunteer, please telephone Friends of Faith, Inc. at (510)834 4142.

This post originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle online edition, The Gate.