Through gloom of cancer, there’s Gilda’s Club

There’s a reason no one says no to Babe Lehrer.

Whenever Tacoma’s legendary fundraiser puts the ask to someone, it’s to bring art, history, education and beauty to town.

This time she’s going for the grace of companionship, understanding, laughter and cookies.

She’s raising money to bring Gilda’s Club to town.

It would join the 30 clubs worldwide that are part of comedian Gilda Radner’s legacy. Radner, one of the original performers on “Saturday Night Live,” died in 1989 of ovarian cancer. Her husband, actor Gene Wilder, helped found the club network in 1991 so people of any age or sex with any type of cancer could have a safe place to relax, get together and learn.

On Tuesday, Lehrer and the team from Gilda’s Club Seattle will launch their campaign with an 11:30 a.m. luncheon and fashion show at Tacoma’s Hotel Murano. The $100-a-plate event, Lehrer says, will be no ordinary fashion show. All the models – men, women and kids – have been touched by cancer.

“There will be a box of tissues on every table,” Lehrer said.

And there will be laughter all around.

That’s the whole idea behind the Gilda’s Club movement. You laugh. You cry. You bake some cookies. You fight as hard as you can. And you face the fact that, as Radner said, “It’s always something.”

Kristin Johnson St. Goddard knows that as well as anyone. She was 28, a teacher, a mom of boys aged 3 and 5, when she found a lump in her breast. She lived in rural Montana, was pregnant, and had to make decisions about the mastectomy and the chemotherapy that would make it impossible to continue the pregnancy.

“There was nobody to talk to,” she said. “Nobody.”

In 1997, when St. Goddard was 39, a terrible pain in her chest felled her. The cancer was back and had spread to her lungs. Her doctor told her she would die within two years.

“I told him, ‘I just don’t have time to die right now,’” she said. “My deal with God was to get my kids through high school. My father said to come to Seattle for a second opinion.”

The second opinion was no better than the first, but the treatment was.

Soon the support would be, too. She called around to support groups, but no one ever got back to her. Then she heard that Anna Gottlieb was working out of a donated basement office at Sears in Shoreline to start a Gilda’s Club. Gottlieb got right back to her, and St. Goddard joined the project.

When Gottlieb was a child, her mother fought cancer. It was a lonely, hellish struggle.

“We thought every day that she was going to die. I always thought, there’s got to be a better way,” said Gottlieb, whose mother is well and lives in Florida.

Gilda’s Club looked like that better way to Gottlieb. She worked four solid years on it, and in 2002 the Seattle clubhouse opened at 1400 Broadway. It operates on an annual budget of about $250,000 and offers a homelike setting to drop in for a chat or for family programs, wellness, pilates, knitting, yoga, alumni, music and art groups.

St. Goddard, who has survived 11 years with stage IV cancer, gives Gilda’s Club part of the credit.

She told a friend there that she was getting very sick with her intravenous therapy.

“She said to tell them to slow down. They were giving it to me too fast,” St. Goddard said. “There was an older woman who was in pain all the time. She thought that was part of having cancer. We told her about pain clinics, and for the first time in years she was pain-free and gardening again.”

This is the resource Lehrer wants for Tacoma.

It has not escaped her notice that the climate for fundraising is gray and rainy. Even so, she has most of the seats sold for “Surviving in Style.”

If you’d like to attend, don’t feel left out. Lehrer can still fit you in. Give her a call at 253-383-1283. You’ll be glad to have said yes to Lehrer, St. Goddard, Gottlieb – and Gilda.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677

kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com