BY FARAH F. JADRAN I PHOTOGRAPHY BY CINDY BELL
This isn’t about Beth Baldwin. This isn’t about what she’s done or what she
will do.
Instead, this is about the survivors, those who lost their battle with breast
cancer, and those who are still fighting, and those who are yet to be diagnosed.
“I’ve always been the one who’s behind the scenes,” Beth said. “Every
organization needs a ‘front and center person.’ My brothers do that very
well. [My daughter] Jacqueline does that very well.” Beth says there needs
to be someone who can be out of the spotlight who is making it all come
together. Her daughter Jill is good at this, too. “I can’t do what they do and
they can’t do what I do.”
The realization of these individual talents is what makes the Baldwin Family
so strong and what has made the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research
Fund of CNY an unstoppable force. The fund, which provides grants and
money for research at Upstate University hospital, is on a mission to find a
cure for breast cancer, and has been for several years. What might seem like a
tall order is actually one that Beth believes is on the horizon.
“I know we’re close,” she says. “How do I know? I just do.”
The Angel’s Undying Faith
How does she “just know” that a cure is out there and that it’s close? Beth’s
faith must be one of the most certain truths I know of. She truly lives her
life with her faith in God as her guide. There is nothing that will shake this
angel’s faith, not even a disease like breast cancer, and Beth, executive director
of the fund, has witnessed it all.
The number of hours spent at someone’s side during chemotherapy or
during their final day, or final hours has gone beyond counting. She does this
without hesitation and with great compassion. But how does she voluntarily
put herself in situations like these?
“People keep asking me that,” Beth said. “I never really thought about that.”
So, I asked her again. “My reason for doing this is to be quiet and still for
others. No one else needs to know I am doing it,” she said. “Just God needs
to know. I feel very blessed to be chosen to do what I do.”
Instead of telling you a story about how Beth is so “amazing” or
“compassionate” (which, she is), she told me a story. This story, and a few
others, will help you see why she chooses to hold the hands of those fighting
all types of cancer, not just breast cancer.
Stacy’s Second Battle
On the day of this year’s annual golf tournament fundraiser, I asked Beth if
there were any survivors playing or in attendance. She immediately brought
up Stacy Huntington, a woman who would begin her second battle with
breast cancer that same week. Stacy also organizes Hoops For a Cure, another
annual fundraiser that benefits the fund.
It is because of people like Stacy that Beth does what she does. Stacy, avid
golfer and runner, loves to be outdoors and, therefore, being on the links at
the Turning Stone for this year’s event was more than fitting. Beth said the
beautiful, fresh air on Sept. 16 was exactly what she hoped for. Stacy was able
to play, sometimes using one arm for a stroke here and there because of some
pain. However, according to Beth, it’s hard to tell when a lot of women have
breast cancer, unless they lose their hair. Why? “Because they keep going,”
she said. “If Stacy is here then that means I need to be here.”
A few days after the tourney, Beth sat with Stacy and her husband during her
chemotherapy treatment. “My role?” she said. “I try to listen, and if there’s a
lot of silence, I try to talk. I say things that are motivational.”
What is Beth sure to not do in the presence of someone fighting his or cancer?
“I try not to cry, but I never tell them not to cry,” Beth said. “Sometimes that
can be a good thing for them. I like to think that’s the cancer leaving them.
Their tears have to leave them, too. They are the ones going through it and
they’re the strongest in the circle.” In order to become a survivor, they have to
be strong, and this shows everyone else their attitude: “I’m going to make it.”
Her gift is the ability to be a rock, an unmovable and indestructible rock for
those who need her most.
“I am able to emotionally control myself. If they can be strong, and they’re
the ones going through it… God’s gotta give me that gift to give me strength
to do it,” Beth said. “And if that means you [wait] to cry the whole way home
from Upstate [University Hospital], then you cry the whole way home. But
I’m not crying for me, I’m crying for her.”
In another way, Beth knows it’s sometimes her job to take the role of a
mother, sister, daughter or friend to those who are sitting in for a treatment,
or for those who are enduring the final hours and minutes of their life.
On the Outside, Looking in the Window
“I’m looking into what I’m seeing and it reminds me kind of the journey of
a soldier,” Beth said. “I’m watching them go into war and battle and have
no idea what they’re getting into. They can be young or old, a man or a
lady.” Beth says people fighting cancer are so much like soldiers that when
they finish treatment or reach a state of remission, it’s like a homecoming
celebration at Hancock International Airport. “Their life is forever changed.
They’re not the same person who got on the airplane and went to another
country,” she said. “It’s the same way that the person with cancer is forever
changed by experiences.” And in some cases, she says, soldiers may witness
death and people with cancer will witness the disease take the lives of others.
syracuseWomanMag.com :: october 2012
35
When she’s on the outside, looking in, and sees what affects those closest to
the person who is battling — she knows to assume another role.
“My role as a human being is to be their cheerleader,” she said. “I witnessed
this with my own mother [when she was diagnosed]. She didn’t want to
expose her kids to fear, she wanted to be the strong mother. It’s like I am
supposed to be the one holding the sign at the airport for the soldier…or
holding their hands at Upstate [Uuniversity Hospital]”
“The hardest part and my favorite part is to be there with the patient, whether
it’s the treatment…or when I’ve been there when people have died of breast
cancer or any type of breast cancer.” Being there when someone lets go, Beth
says, is not easy and she won’t pretend that it is.
“When you’re helping someone go to the other side, it’s tough, but it’s
beautiful.” Beth finds the beauty in something that may appear grim when
that person describes to them what they see before they pass away. In
particular, she remembers a 14-year-old girl dying of cancer who described
what she saw as she began to let go. “Her mom was unable to tell her, ‘It’s OK,
you can go,’” Beth said. “It was my duty to do that.”
Beth recalls that the girl’s legs were bent as she lay in bed. Great fatigue caused
her legs to sway and bump into her as she stood by her bed. Beth went to
steady the girl’s legs. “Ouch.” She hurt her even with the slightest of touch
because she was so fatigued and weak at 60 pounds. All of a sudden, the
girl’s arms went into the air and she flailed them about. Beth refrained from
stopping her arms as she feared hurting her again. “Why are your arms in the
air?” Beth asked her. The girl replied, “There’s a man at the end of my bed and
his arms are out,” she said. “He’s calling my name…and I don’t want to go.”
“It was hard that day…” Beth broke down and tears filled her light green and
gray eyes. Not at the girl’s home, where she was that day, but in the Fairmount
Panera. She held true to not cry in front of the strong young girl who was
fighting the good fight, but she let her emotions go as she and I spoke.
“I’m afraid to go,” the girl said. Beth said she asked her why. “Because I don’t
know anyone in heaven.” Beth told the girl to look for her father, Mr. Alec
Baldwin, who was already there. Beth’s father was a social studies teacher and
the girl loved that subject so she felt this was the best way to comfort her at
that moment.
“She said to me at one point, ‘I feel like I’m going, will you come with me?’ I
said , “sure,’” said Beth as she continued to dry tears from her eyes. “I couldn’t
tell her I couldn’t go. I was thankful that I was there.” The girl passed away
on her own mother’s birthday. She hung on so she could see her mother’s
one last time. Beth says she remembers this happened when the fund wasn’t
even in existence yet. It’s clear to me, looking from the outside in, that her
calling was already in full force. While the girl’s father worked at home for his
own business, her mother was unable to be there on a daily basis because she
was working to keep the health insurance available to her daughter. “I slept at
their house for two weeks on a mattress, trying so hard to help her mom and
dad,” Beth said. “Again, you feel like you’re looking inside to someone else’s
house, literally.”
The Rock of Gibraltar & the Baldwin Name
Every day, Beth spends countless hours giving to others and checking on
others. All her siblings and children confirm this of their mother. Everywhere
she goes, someone either thanks her for helping them or tells her they know
someone she touched. How do I know this? Five times within three hours,
while at the Fairmount Panera, a different person greeted Beth while we
talked. Each had a different reason to say “hello” or “thank you”.
“You’re like the Rock of Gibraltar.” This is what Billy Baldwin told his sister
Beth. She asked him to explain further. “It changes and gets older as the water
hits it, but nothing is going to destroy it,” he said. “You have that conviction,
nothing is going to stop you.”
“My father always told me to remember that I was a Baldwin and to be
respectful of my name,” Beth said. For this reason, Beth believes it’s her duty
to represent that part of the fund’s name with full regard. And for the same
reason, her children find the same honor in the family’s mission.
“I am very proud of my family,” said Jill Keuchler, one of Beth’s daughters.
“We will not stop until we find the cure for breast cancer.” Since she was very
young, the fund has been a part of her everyday life. ”It has impacted me not
only through my grandmother being a survivor, but also from survivors I have
met along the way and remembering those we have lost along the way.”
Beth’s only son, Jonathan, says it’s an assumed duty to be involved in the fund.
“It’s an indescribable feeling, but to continue the crusade and passing it down
through the generations tells you a little something,” he said. While he says he
“has no choice” but to be involved, he says with great pride, “I was raised by
the queen, Carol, my mother, and five sisters.”
Finding a similar path as her mother, Jacqueline Baldwin-Calveric says there’s
a plan for her as well. “Even though this is a family mission, it is something
that has touched my heart in so many ways,” Jacqueline said. “I’ve watched
my friends die, my family members battle… recurrence strikes people when
they least expect it. I know this is God’s plan for me.”
Beth repeatedly says she never feels drained by what she does for the fund.
“I don’t know what it is,” she said. “It’s just gotta be God giving me that
strength.” This rock-like strength is what enhances Beth’s faith in what she sees
as a cure for breast cancer in the near future.
“My mom is the life source of this fund,” Jacqueline said. “She wakes up and
breathes this fund, and barely takes time to take care of herself because her
life consists of helping others. Everything she does for this fund is because
she wants to. [It’s] because her mission in life is to stop suffering and pain
associated with breast cancer. I look at her every day and hope and pray that
I can carry on what she has given to so many others, and to the foundation
of this fund.”
As Jacqueline assumes that “front and center” role Beth describes, she knows
that it’s her mother’s footsteps she will follow.
“I would be lost without her,” Jacqueline said. And so would countless people
in this community that call Beth their angel on earth.
To learn more about the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund of CNY,
visit www.findacure.org.
__ Jill Keuchler
--From left, Jill Keuchler (holding Lorna,
daughter of Jacqueline), Jean Keuchler,
Jacqueline Baldwin-Calveric, and Jonathan
Baldwin-Keuchler. Not pictured: Beth’s
daughters, Jessica Keuchler-Arnold and
Jennifer Keuchler