JONESBORO, Ark. (AP) - Mary Kathryn Berry would draw her last breath during Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Berry, who died Oct. 4, was the founder of the Northeast Arkansas Breast Cancer Support Group in 1989.
Daughter Mary Hahn was quick to point out to sister Cheryl Reeves the significance.
“I told Cheryl that the other day,” Hahn told the Jonesboro Sun . “I said, you know, ironic may not be the word, but I said, she was born in October, Breast Cancer Support Group, breast cancer, October, and then she died in October. So I think that’s fitting.”
Hahn, Reeves and son Chuck Keller were planning a big 85th birthday celebration for Oct. 27, but it was not to be.
Berry, a retired nurse, was honored with a “Warrior Women” portrait in the St. Bernards Imaging Center Wall of Fame during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 2012.
Berry was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988. She told The Sun she wanted to share her struggles with people who understood.
“When I went through chemo, there were no support groups to help women,” Berry said. “I thought, ’We have to meet to give women support.’”
The Northeast Arkansas Breast Cancer Support Group was soon created. Berry said it is a way for women who are diagnosed with the disease to talk and meet with each other.
The group helps breast cancer survivors with everything from financial aid to counseling.
Reeves said her mother never wanted attention for anything she did, even though her greatest joy was offering love and a helping hand to others. In fact, she did many kind things her children didn’t know about. They learned that during visitation following her death.
“It’s neat when people come to you and share stories with you that you didn’t know about, but it touched their lives in some form or fashion,” Reeves said. “And it just gives you a warm spot in your heart.”
Berry and her first husband, Charles Keller, operated several businesses over the years, and their children worked in the stores at an early age.
“We’re the reason we now have child labor laws,” Chuck Keller joked.
But at age 50, she decided to return to college to earn a nursing degree, attending Arkansas State University with her children.
It wasn’t awkward, said Reeves, because their mother was their best friend.
Hahn agreed.
“And we could go to her in confidence,” Hahn said. “We could share anything we needed to with her and know that it wasn’t going to be spoken again, unless we wanted to.”
Reeves said several of Berry’s co-workers expressed the same thing.
“They said, ’Your mother was someone we could go and talk to about things we couldn’t go to our own mother about.’” Reeves recalled hearing at visitation. “’But she’d give us advice in a loving way. She wouldn’t judge us for whatever we were talking about.’ She just loved deeply. She loved people.”
Berry’s nursing career lasted more than 30 years. And nothing stood in the way of her nursing passion, not even breast cancer.
Back then, patients had to go to Little Rock for radiation treatment.
“She would work, then at the end of the day, she would drive to Little Rock,” Keller said. “Then she would get the radiation the next morning and be back to work by 9.”
She fought through that first cancer. But she had to give up her career 26 years later, when she was diagnosed with a second cancer.
Berry never smoked, drank or used illicit drugs. But everybody has at least one weakness: hers was drinking Pepsi.
“And I put a Pepsi can in her casket,” Hahn said. “That and her nursing cap.”
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Information from: The Jonesboro Sun, http://www.jonesborosun.com
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