Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a public affairs special focusing on the biggest issues in facting you this week.
Here's many Munyos.
And welcome to another edition of Iheartradios Communities. As you heard, I am Manny Munyo's. Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month isn't until September, but on June twenty eighth, Gilda Radner would have turned seventy nine, and Gilda's Clubs nationwide are using the date to bring national attention to a disease that affects over nineteen thousand women every year in our country. I'm joined now by Christian White, vice president of Guilda's Clubs, South Florida. Christian,
I appreciate the time, thanks for having me. So I imagine for a lot of our listeners right now, they might not be familiar with who Gilda Radner was. Those of us of a certain age remember her from Saturday Night Live, So let's start there.
Who was Gilda Radner.
Gilda Radner, the first woman comedian to be on Saturday Night Live, really paved the way for women in comedy in the early eighties late seventies, and unfortunately, cancer impacts us all, and it impacted Gilda Radner through ovarian cancer. Nineteen eighty six, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and
then three short years later we lost her. But if it was not for Gilda Radner and her amazing husband Jeane Wilder to create the vision and create Guilda's Club, which later turned into Cancer Support Community and Guildes's Club to make sure that anybody impacted by cancer, not only ovarian cancer, but all cancers, to make sure that no one faces cancer alone, being that cancer is hard enough anyways.
Yeah, and she was very open publicly about her battle with cancer, and at the time it was very rare, especially for celebrities, to discuss public health challenges publicly. How do you think that changed the national conversation around cancer awareness because she had a big role in doing that.
She definitely had a big role. She wanted to make sure that people spoke up and people spoke about what they were feeling, varian cancer being a very silent cancer, the whisper of cancer they used to call it, and being on comedy being Rosanna Rosanna Dana on SNL, she would just speak up and make sure that not only women but everybody would just talk about symptoms, make sure that they spoke to their doctors, spoke to their support groups to get checked out and make sure that everybody
that was feeling something got checked out, and just had the mindset that cancer impacts us all and you might as well get checked out.
I want to get into the date her birthday. She would have been celebrating seventy nine, as I mentioned in a moment. But when most of us think of cancer, we think brest cancer, lung cancer, you know, prostate cancer, leukemias, things like that. Ovarian cancer doesn't get the publicity, let's say, of a lot of these other cancers, but it affects, as I mentioned, nineteen thousand women every year. How does Gilda's Club help those affected by it?
So offering free, emotional, social and educational support to anybody that's impacted by cancer, especially ovarian cancer. We'll give a perfect example. Ovarian cancer does not shy away from any specific age group. Personal friend of mine just recently diagnosed with ovarian cancer at the young age of twenty five.
That's crazy, and that was not going to.
Go to the doctor to get checked up as much as especially as you get older, you get checked out. But she got checked out and got stage three cancer and luckily, because of the support groups and the educational support and tying the resources that we have with clinical studies and so forth, she was able to get the help that she needs. And luckily today we could say
that she's in remission. But it's just making sure you go get checked out, making sure if you're feeling something, go talk to a doctor, to talk to a support group, and find the help that you need. There's a Google well can find anybody. And that's unfortunately because Gilda Radner's name this day and age is not as well known
as it was the past. You type in cancer support, cancer, cancer research and whatnot and two organizations pop up, and guild Us Club and Cancer Sport Community do pop up to make sure that everybody gets the help that they need.
And that's the website you could go to for a lot of resources. Questions Cancer Support Community dot org, Cancer Support Community dot org. What do you think are some of the challenges of raising ovarian cancer awareness on the national level and how do you at Guild's Club attempt to do that.
When I joined Guilder's Club three years ago, i asked our board and I asked him what was missing? What is happening that not a Guilders Club in cancer Port community is not that household name. Mind you, we have two hundred locations worldwide and we are one of the largest nonprofits for cancer support. However it's still not that household name. And what's lacking is what we're able to do today, speak on the radio to the masses, speak
on news outlets and so forth. So that's what we are trying to do is put a lot of attention on the media and to get our words out there, spend money on marketing. But at the same time, it's raising the dollars to be able to jill that because Guildes's Club and Cancer Poor Community we do not qualify for government grants because we're not doing clinical trials. We're just offering that those resources, and so it's really raising the dollars to be able to spread that awareness and
that news about it. And today as we're doing that, the word of mouth is really getting out there luckily, but there's still a lot of work to be done to be able to raise the awareness not only for ovarian cancer but all the other cancers.
Well, let's talk about that.
Can I get personal for a second, you're a marine veteran, absolutely thank you for your service, pleasure what about your service and the United States Marine Corps made you decide that you wanted to do something like this when you left the service.
After I left the service, I left the service early. Unfortunately I became a Type one diabetic and can be
a field marine at the same time. So I got honorably discharged and wanted to continue providing service to my community and fell into the nonprofit career like many most individuals fall into nonprofit not really planning on it, And sixteen years later, I'm still here trying to impact the community as best as possible by raising awareness about cancer, support, raising awareness about community impact because as a community, we
say we are stronger than cancer. So it's just one person out of time, one heartbeat out of time, to try to provide impact and service to our community.
I want to get into ovarian cancer specifically, and what's special about Gilda Radner's birthday this year in a second, But I imagine, and the part of your job is fundraising. I imagine in this day and age it's more difficult than ever, not only because of inflation, people living paycheck to paycheck and things like that to be able to raise and you've got so many different hands trying to get in everybody's pockets, you know, so many different worthy organizations.
How has that made your job more difficult? And trying to raise the funds to continue some of the great things that Guilda's Club does.
There's a lot, as you said, there's a lot of hands in the pot to get trying to get those dollars because every nonprofit organization is trying to further their impact and support, but it is difficult. So it's really getting out there, spreading that awareness, getting into individuals.
Years.
There's corporations that we try to partner with and it takes years of building that relationship with those organizations so they could see that we are a major player in trying to further the impact of cancer support. And just so recently there was an individual that said, we are finally going to partner with you, We're going to give you some support, and I said, what changed your mind?
Your patience, your dedication, your drive. You guys are still here and we keep seeing you everywhere now, So it is hard. It is hard, not gonna lie about that, but through individuals like yourself, iHeart to be able to continue to spread the word about Guildes's Club and cancer support community where we've been able to chip away at the iceberg to try to further the impact with the dollars being raised.
Your impact obviously, uh, just watching you talk about it, it's a difficult thing, obviously because it's a deadly disease.
But the way you talk about.
The change that you're making, the impact you're having on the community, just watching you is kind of infectious. So I could tell this is something that you're really believing and is close to you, close to your heart.
You mentioned one of the things one of the.
Goals of a Guilda's Club is just to raise awareness and make sure women get checked out. I know you're not a doctor, but talk to me about what are some of the symptoms of ovarian cancer. What can women keep an eye out and then decide to go get checked.
Mood changes, sleep deprivation, pale complexity, jaundice in the eyes, taste different your taste buds change, things like that, and then just your just over exhaustion is one of the main ones that stand out to or varying cancer.
And again it's very it's a it's a sie, it's.
A silent cancer that you really don't get that many symptoms. So it's really just getting checked out on your monthly or quarterly visits to your doctor, getting checked out and making sure you don't miss those doctor's appointments.
And you mentioned this isn't something that primarily older women are affected by. The young very young women are affected by it as.
Well as well.
Yes, the going to get tested. What is the blood test? Doctors have to do something more invasive.
It's a blood test as well, but there are many different types of tests I guess specific since I am.
Not sure professional, I imagine we've come a long way though, and not only diagnosing but treating ovarian cancer since Gilda Radner died in the eighties.
Absolutely absolutely, there's as I just mentioned that personal friend with Gilda Radner dying in just three short years having sage three ovarian cancer and individual being able to recover that quickly and being remissioned. So yes, there are so many advances in modern medicine that there's there's a fighting chance to battle cancer and live past it, lift to fight another day.
The website again is Cancer Support Community dot org. Cancer Support Community dot Org. Got a few more minutes here with Christian White, vice president of Guilda's Club, South Florida. I have a save the date card in front of me. June twenty eighth is the annual celebration raising awareness for their nationwide network of Cancer Support for Gilda's Clubs nationwide network. Talk to me about June twenty eighth and what it means.
In honor of her birthday can support community struggle than Cancer Day was created and every single CSC and Guilda's Club will be screaming from the mountaintops promoting awareness about cancer support community and Guilda's Club talking about all the cancers that are impacting individuals, families, friends and caregivers. And we want individuals to just look us up so they could see all the amazing resources that are offered there. And what better day to do that than Gilda Radner's birthday.
Woman that started this movement for us to be able to provide this impact across the country and now across the world.
And you have a lot of events. It's not just this one day. This is something you guys do a lot of different events all year long.
Absolutely, our next signature event is coming up right after that September thirteenth, which is Gilda's Race for Hope here
in South Florida at davi's NSU campus. And this is just a race, a walk just for all of us to come together, raise our colors in the sky, the color of cancer that we support and as as a unit, one organization, one community, stronger than cancer, to go out and support all those individuals and screen that we're here to fight another day and we're not navigating cancer alone.
How can somebody who has had a loved one affected biovarian cancer, has lost a loved one affected by get involved and trying to help guild this club and everything that you're trying to do nationwide.
Why I say nationwide, log in, check out the Cancer's port Community online or guild US Club South Florida dot org or gild 's Club in their local area and just reach out to the local offices, reach out to my organization, and go to Club South Florida to just either volunteer to give back. We're always looking for volunteers.
We just recently moved from from our four thousand square foot facility into this mega sixteen thousand square foot facility in downtown off of downtown for Lauderdale and just to further the mission, further the impact because now we cover all of South Florida and that way the only way we can do that is through volunteers, through donations and support, through corporate partnerships, and through our signature events, by getting people to come up, show up and talk about how
they've been impacted by cancer.
Where does that money go, how does an impact? How do you help those impacted by ovarian cancer and really all cancers.
As you mentioned, one.
Hundred percent of the donations go directly to the mission that we serve and to make sure that no one faces cancer alone, because cancer is hard enough. And what I mean by that is our educational classes, our healthy living workshop, our nutrition classes, art classes, music therapy classes, and just all the resources that we're offering under the roof at Guilder's Club, South Florida, but across the nation
as well. That's what the dollars go to. And right now we're running a huge drive for food donation so that individuals could come into Guilda's Club, open the pantry and just get free food and proteins and things like that so that they at least have a meal at home. Right, cancer's expensive cancer treatment is expensory. You shouldn't have to
worry about having to buy groceries. And that's another thing that can Cancer Support Community and Guild's Clubs across the nation do at least once a week we have a community meal where the individuals impacted by cancer could come in have a free meal, either donated by local restaurants or we buy it from local vendors, so that they could just have a hot meal at Guilda's Club and have a nice evening amongst friends and other individuals impacted by cancer, so that they could come together.
Kristin White, vice President of Guilda's Club of South Florida. June twenty eighth, Gilda Radner would have turned seventy nine to ovarian cancer effects over nineteen thousand women every year in our country. I encourage you to go to the website get more information Cancer Support Community dot org. That's Cancer Support Community dot org. Christian, thanks again for your service to our nation. Thank you for all the wonderful work you're doing here with Gilda's Club.
Thank you so much. Appreciate everybody listening.
The saying is that it's a man's world, but glass ceilings have been being shattered for generations now by groundbreaking women. Today we have a chance to go into the mind of one of those women. She's Kelly Ramsey, author of Wildfire Days, A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West. Kelly, I appreciate the time, thanks for sharing your story with us.
Thank you so much for having me MEMI.
I will apologize in advance if any of these questions sound misogynistic.
It's not my intention.
Okay, But as I mentioned, as far as we've come in our country, there's still clearly a lot of.
Areas where it is a man's world.
So let me start off with this. How do you go from studying poetry and fiction writing to founding a program for artists to becoming a member of a Hotshot firefighting crew?
Great question. Well, so after founding the nonprofit, I was living in Texas and I had gotten really into outdoor adventure. I was doing a lot of solo backpacking trips and not climbing and bouldering, and I just love the outdoors so much. I thought, you know, I would love to get a job doing this, but I didn't really have the right background and experience. My degree in poetry wasn't
that relevant. Yeah, And so I got this volunteer job on a trail crew, and you know, the idea was, come and volunteer and get the experience you need to launch a career working in public lands, and that is what happened. I worked on the trail crew for a summer and then became a wilderness ranger the following summer.
And I had some roommates who were female wildland firefighters, and I just was sort of watching what they were doing and seeing how you know, fulfilled and excited they seemed about the job and also how strong they looked, and I was just sort of in awe of what they were doing. And I also was learning a lot about fire from working on a forest that was extremely fire prone, and so I was curious about, you know, kind of both sides of the job and applied to
a hotshot crew. Kind of a wild choice, but that's what I did.
Wild choice, to say the least.
For those that aren't aware explain what a wildfire a what a hotshot wildfire.
Crew does totally well. They're often referred to as kind of like the special Forces of wildland firefighting. Some people have said it's kind of like the Navy Seals of firefighting, so it's really specialized crew that's highly trained. A lot of the training is physical, so hiking with forty five to seventy pounds, really steep slopes, running push ups, pull up, sit up dips, you know, circuit training, sprints. So it's a lot of that sort of like training montage of
being super fit. And then there are also a lot of requirements in terms of the technical firefighting skill and all of that is so that these crews can be sent to the most sort of rigorous, remote and maybe dangerous parts of a wildfire to tackle the toughest assignment.
Hence the reason why this is an extremely male dominated job. You happen to be the only woman, and I believe one of the oldest on.
Your Hotshot crew.
Talk to me how that played into it when you first got there.
Yeah, when I first got there, not only was that the only woman, but the first in about ten years, So it was just a little bit uncomfortable.
You know.
I ended up having a great crew. The guys were really open minded, fair minded, willing to treat me of any but just like any rookie on the crew. I had to earn my place there and you know, prove myself, prove that I could keep up and that I was a really hard worker. So it definitely took a few months just for me to sort of learn how to
fit in socially and to prove my work ethic. But yeah, at first, it's not like they just for sort of they were afraid to say the wrong thing, because the way that men are when they're in a group of all men, right, is very different than when a woman enters the space. So they were like afraid to make the wrong joke or you know, and so it was sort of like I had to be like, Okay, I'm I'm a normal person. I'm pretty cool. You can be normal around me. You know, you don't have to be
sort of stilted and formal and awkward. But you know, you also can't make a misogynist joke in front of me. So kind of like finding that line of you know, we can be comfortable around each other and there can be a lot of joking around and sort of acting browe for lack of a better words, but like, there are there there are there are lines, right, There are boundaries and things that aren't acceptable.
To do finding where that respect is.
I find it fascinating that they were trying to be respectful and weren't just you know, being locker room guys when you first got there.
Yeah, absolutely they were. They were almost trying too hard to be respectful, such that it was like they wouldn't talk to me at all or even look at me. You know. I had to be like, hey, I'm also here. You can't avoid me for you know, an entire sure hire season.
And I imagine that was really important getting past that because you certainly, like you would in a military crew or something like that, of specialized individuals, you build a camaraderiet together, and if you have that whole you know, she's a woman among us thing, you kind of can't really build.
That, can you.
Absolutely, Yeah, you need to be you know, like close, You need to know each other, You need to trust each other because you are, Yeah, you're relying on everybody else for your safety and they're relying on you. So yeah, it was very important to me the break through those you know, sort of initial walls and build good relationships with these men in order for it to feel like obviously, nothing is ever really genderblind in our culture. I just
think so. But you know, as close as we could get, I sort of would often forget that I was, you know, the only woman among these men, and it seemed like sometimes they would forget too, you know, like I was just sort of one of the guys on some level, which was necessary.
What was more difficult for you the physical aspect of the job initially or the mental challenge, which I imagine especially you know, as they call it, your rookie season, had to be very challenging.
Yeah.
I mean, not only was it challenging for anyone who's a rookie on a hotshot crew, but twenty twenty was the most severe wildcar season California had ever seen, so
it was just really intense. Yeah. I think initially I thought the part of it was going to be the hardest, but once I got up to speed, once I sort of learned to be able to keep up on the hikes, then when we got to two or three months into the season, the mental part was the hardest because you know, you go out on fourteen day assignments, then have a
couple of days off, then you go out again. But by the time you get to your seventh or eighth assignment in a row, the cumulative fatigue is really intense, and you still have to operate at this really high level physically and mentally. So you know, getting up every day to do another sixteen hour day of work when you've done that for one hundred days or more is really you know, you just mentally have to like talk
yourself up. You know you can do this. You've got this, only three more days till the end of the assignment. You know, talk yourself into making it through, right.
Yeah.
Speaking with Kelly Rams, the author of Wildfire Days, A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West, you talk in the book about your relationship with your father. What impact did that have on one you deciding to do something like this and two keeping you in the job?
Yeah. I mean I think at the time I didn't realize a direct connection. I didn't recognize that that was what was happening. But in hindsight, you know, my dad was more of a blue collar guy. He was a contractor, and so I think that the type of people who often work in wildland fire, not all of them are, you know, blue collar at all. There's a lot of people with forestry degrees and that kind of thing. But the type of guy which is really familiar to me.
You know.
I was like, these guys kind of resemble my dad in a way. They're super hard working, they work outdoors, they work with their hands, you know, and I was like, this feels comfortable, and yeah, I don't. Again, at the time, I didn't really think about what role my relationship to
my dad had in my continuing in the job. But I do think in many ways, I was still wrestling with some grief over my dad's alcoholism and kind of what had become of his life, and really hard work, as it turns out, is a great way to process grief. So you know, part partly I was there out of just a love for the job, and partly I was there because I was, you know, working through some things and trying to figure out life and myself and trying to find a place where I felt like I belonged.
How scared or what is there is there one moment that sticks out in your mind where you thought, all right, this is this is it. I'm not I'm not going to make it out of this one. Can you put that into words for us?
Yeah? I mean, there wasn't exactly a moment where I thought that my life was directly threatened, but a moment where I thought it could have been. So I saw a tree fall on one of my colleagues. A lot of times, you know, trees will burn out at the base and then fall over and fall across the fire line and hit firefighters. Tree strikes are one of the biggest risks the firefighter's life. And so I saw this tree fall on my colleague, my friend next to me, and he was standing, I don't know, a few feet
from me, and I had that thought. I mean, all of my first thoughts were like, is he okay? Is my friend going to die? But I had the thought later within hours of like, oh my god, that tree could just as usually have fallen on me, and it could have gone another way and I could be dead. And that was one of those moments where I was like, oh, I you know, I think I sometimes compartmentalize or pretend the job isn't that dangerous, and then you have these
moments and you're like, oh, it's really dangerous. Sure this could take my life.
Yeah, I imagine you had to break certain stereotypes when you won. You know, your crew over if you will, how long did it take for you to feel that you had their respect and why.
I feel like it's started to change about a month in So the whole first month, when you know, all the temporary seasonals come on in the spring, the whole first month is training together before you go to a fire. And at first, you know, my hiking times were not great. I was at the back of the pack, and so I very much felt that I had to prove myself physically,
and so that whole first month I trained extra. I went out after work, I went out on the weekend and hiked, and gradually I got faster and was able to you know, keep up with them. And so I feel like that's when it started to shift. You know, a couple of people look at me like, huh, okay, you know, she's putting in the work. And then but it was a couple more months of actually going out to fires and doing the job and digging line as we call it, which is digging with hand tools to
create hand line fire line. As my digging improved and as I showed how much I was willing to just like work all day long, bent over digging in dirt. You know, after a couple of months of that. I feel like that was when I really felt that I had the respect of, you know, a greater portion of the crew.
You weren't just a girl anymore.
Yeah, I was like, Okay, she's a girl, but she's doing this us. She's working right, working just as hard as we are.
Is it public perception, is it media coverage or are we having these kind of out of control I don't know if there's a difference between a brush fire and a wildfire. It seems like these things are happening more often, and they're they're much bigger.
Yeah, it's not just perception or coverage's actually statistically true, and we're having more wildfires. Actually sometimes there will be fewer wildfires, but each one is bigger. So all told, we're seeing more acres burned, and also, you know, just a lot more damage to life and property and just like you know, a lot more people who are suffering because wildfire has taken something from them. So yeah, it's definitely it's gotten worse over at least the past twenty years.
But then I would say the past five to ten years have been the most severe, and in the last several we're just seeing some of the biggest wildfires in history.
What is doing this job taught you about yourself that you might not have known while you were sitting back writing or in an artist column.
It has taught me that, both physically and mentally, I have no idea or you know, you a person in general, we have no idea what we're capable of, Like, we are capable of so much more than we imagine. I would never have thought that I could have done, you know, hiked up these hills, carried all that weight, worked for sixteen or twenty four hours straight, you know, without real breaks. I didn't think that was possible for myself, and yet
when I pushed myself, I could do it. Though. I think that was one of the hugest lessons for me is that the limits that we perceive do not actually exist.
What was the most difficult part of putting your experience really putting your life on paper?
I get it, you're a writer trained to be a writer.
But was there any anything hard that you had in translating your experiences and putting it together in a book, because that's different.
Yeah, for sure. I mean it was a little bit difficult for me to nail down all the technical aspects of firefighting because I had so internalized them that I sort of took them for granted. And thankfully, my editor is really wonderful, and he was like, you know, you need to describe everything that you carry in the pack, you need to describe what the vehicle looks like that you're writing it. And I'd be like, oh, okay, okay.
So that was challenging on one level. But I think the biggest challenge was to write about my childhood and my family because it was so personal and so painful. And you know, when you're writing a book, you're not just telling somebody what happened. You're shaping it into a compelling scene, and you know, you're creating this artifice, almost
as if you're writing a novel. And it was so hard to do that with my childhood and my father, and it's so personal, so it becomes difficult to craft that in a way that's for someone else, for a reader. It's Kelly.
Kelly Ramsey, author of Wildfire Days, A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West. Really appreciate your time this morning. Thank you for sharing your story with us. Best of luck with the book, and stay safe out there.
Thank you so much, Manny. It was great to be here.
And that'll do it for another edition of Iheartradios Communities. I'm Manny Muno's until next time.