By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
Hinesville goes pink for awareness
Events include pink pancake supper, Art Your Bra display, special-edition farmers market
Placeholder Image
Danielle Hipps
Published: Oct 19, 2011, 1:33 PM

Downtown Hinesville will be home to a pink invasion Thursday night when multiple community groups come together to raise awareness for breast cancer.

The Hinesville Downtown Farmers Market will host “Go Pink Night” in Bradwell Park with live music by Just Us and a visit from Carolyn the Pink Fire Truck, while down the street Poole’s Deli will open for a pink pancake supper and judging of the second annual Art Your Bra contest.

“So many people are touched by breast cancer that it’s important to honor the strength of those who’ve persevered, celebrate the advances of technology and remind people about detection and prevention,” Hinesville Downtown Development Authority programming assistant Katrina Sage said.

“This event is important because it brings awareness to downtown Hinesville, and it will also help create a sense of unity among our citizens and those who are survivors,” she added. The market runs from 4-8 p.m.

Sage said the partnership with the farmers market is fitting because its vendors sell produce and agricultural items that are essential to healthy diets, a necessary step in preventing all forms of cancer.

Vendors are getting involved, too, and will donate proceeds from select items to the local health department to fund mammograms for women without insurance, Sage said.

One vendor, Shane’s Rib Shack, will donate $1 for each dinner sold, according to general manager Shane Burke.

“It’s a great cause, and I think it’s an issue that everybody faces, and everybody needs to do their part just to help find a cure,” Burke said.

Liberty County Health Department Administrator and Suzie Q’s co-founder Deidre Howell said studies consistently show that one in eight women will be affected by breast cancer in their lifetime, but that it is difficult to quantify occurrences of cancer within an area because the data often is kept according to where patients are treated.

“We’re a little below the state rate, and we’re the lowest in our health district for deaths from breast cancer,” Howell said.

But the scientific data and statistics do not tell the full story when it comes to the effects of breast cancer, Howell added.

“Just in the three years since April of 2009 that I’ve been doing Suzie Q’s, I know six women who have been diagnosed within that time period, and that’s just me,” she said. “And of those, one died, and she was only 38.”

That’s what drives the Suzie Q’s to continue raising awareness and funds for the cause.

The 12 entries from this year’s Art Your Bra fundraiser will be on display during a $7 all-you-can-eat pink pancake supper at Poole’s Deli from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Thursday. The meal includes pancakes, meats and a drink, and all proceeds will be donated to the cause.

Three contest judges, Chief Magistrate Melinda Anderson, Liberty Regional Medical Center surgeon Dr. Christina Berenguer and WTOC-TV reporter Brian Entin, will be on hand to determine category winners for the art contest.

The Suzie Q’s also will be stationed at the farmers market with their final “Books for Boobies” used-book sale, with $1 paperbacks and $2 hardbacks.

Proceeds from the Suzie Q’s events will benefit the Coastal Georgia Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Howell said. A portion of the funds will go to research, and a portion likely will come back to Liberty County in the form of grants for mammograms and diagnostics.

Sign up for our e-newsletters
From the book 'Outliers' comes proof that good health is more than just genetics
8ccd7d661f85d37c8298791c9a56bec6e0f8449d4aea5c09c6ffcf527854f186
Friends Jim Young, left, Mike Natale, Jeff Natale and Ryan Kiernan were on Greenwich High School football team together and Jim and Mike were captains. Jim, who was the youngest in Sherry Young's family, was welcome in the homes of the other three boys who still had siblings around and grandparents near. - photo by Sherry Young
Sherry Young
Deseret News
Published: Apr 12, 2018, 12:59 PM
As I look back on my life and the lives of others, both personally and in the reading I have done, I am convinced of the necessity of positive human contact in our lives. We are doubly blessed when we are able to make good friends or are a part of a family where we are accepted and loved.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers tells of a time in the 1950s when Dr. Stewart Wolf met a physician who practiced in the area of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Roseto was settled by a group of Italian families from Roseto, Italy, who re-created their life again in America.

This was in the 1950s before drugs and measures to prevent heart disease became important. In their conversation the physician said, You know, Ive been practicing for 17 years. I get patients from all over, and I rarely find anyone from Roseto under the age of 65 with heart disease.

Wolf was surprised by these words as, It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease.

Wolf enlisted the aid of a sociologist and friend John Bruhn to help him. They found, There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didnt have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didnt have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. Thats it.

They checked into diet, genetics and possibilities of something in the foothills of eastern Pennsylvania but nothing made sense.

What they found was that Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. (Researchers) learned about the extended family clans that underlay the towns social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.

What they found eventually convinced the medical establishment to look beyond the individual and understand the culture people are part of their friends, families and town they came from. They determined that the people we surround ourselves with and the values of the world we inhabit have a profound effect on who we are.

Likely, this study could have been done with other ethnicities. However, my family's experiences with the Italian families in Connecticut ring true to the study. Our hungry and growing sons, especially our youngest son, Jim, who was left home alone with two beady-eyed parents, all had some memorable experiences being fed and loved in the Cos Cob multigenerational families. Proof of the African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child.

We live in an age when the contact we have with people often is on the internet, and many of us live among strangers. Unless we make the effort to reach out, we will become isolated, especially as we age. The Rosetan study is proof that reaching out and communicating may be good for our health.
Latest Obituaries