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Hamptons Magazine, May 23, 2008
By Tom Brokaw
Founded in honor of a dynamic Hamptonite, Joan’s Legacy is taking to the skies every Memorial Day weekend to raise money for lung cancer research.
Let’s begin with the most important part of Joan’s Legacy: Joan Scaragello, a writer for NBC Nightly News, and before that for ABC news. Joan was a tall, handsome woman from a large Italian-American family, the kind of people you’d want to share a stoop with in the Bronx.
I loved to watch Joan walk into the newsroom, just off the train and filled with fresh observations about the city she loved and the world she wrote about every day. She had long strides and carried her shoulders back and her head high; her expression said, “Don’t try that on me; I’ve seen it all.”
She was cool and not easily impressed, except on the day that Robert De Niro visited my office—that got her attention, although she never brought it up with me. All this is to say she was so strong; so fit, and so in command that when I heard the diagnosis that she was shot through with lung cancer it knocked me to my knees emotionally. “God, no,” I thought. “Not Joan, that’s too cruel; she doesn’t smoke, and the newsroom’s been tobacco-free for years.”
I’d had six close friends who’d been diagnosed with lung cancer-all males and all heavy smokers. None of them lived very long. But this would have to be different, wouldn’t it? Joan was such a fighter, and so determined.
I put her in touch with Alice Trillin, the wife of New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin. Alice had survived lung cancer for more than 20 years after radical treatment, and she ran a kind of informal support group for similarly afflicted women. True to form, Joan became and eager student and passionate advocate, promoting the search for a cure and making people aware that lung cancer kills more women each year than breast cancer.
Today Joan’s Legacy: Uniting Against Lung Cancer funds innovative lung cancer research at top institutions around the country and has awarded $3.6 million in grants since its inception in 2001.
Joan fought for the cause, and for her life, to the end. That’s why I support Joan’s Legacy—it’s up to us to carry on her courageous crusade.
The annual Joan’s Legacy Kites for a Cure, a family kite fly on the beach, takes place Satruday,, May 24 (ran date Sunday, May 25), from 4 to 6pm at Coopers Beach, 268 Meadow Lane, Southampton. Parking is free; kites, T-shirts, and snacks are provided for a suggested donation of $25 per flyer. To register or for more information, call 212-627-5500 or visit joanslegacy.org.
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