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Sisters’ Journey Celebrates – Rebecca Grant Jenkins

Read her inspiring story (thanks www.sistersjourney.org)

Thank God for Our Global Village….

We often don’t know how big our village is until there is a disaster. In 2013, disaster hit our house with a multipronged attack. On December 23, I found out I had breast cancer. That news was preceded by the death of my mother-in-law, an aunt, my grandmother, and two uncles.

My husband also had been in the hospital for three weeks when I got the news. I had been laid off from an organization I had been with for more than 10 years due to downsizing. A friend once said, “We all have our turns when it comes to hard times.” This was ours. Through this time of incredible suffering for our family, our village was there – with food, friendship, and most importantly, faith. I first felt the lump when I laid down on the bed, exhausted, after visiting my husband Juan in the hospital. I reached over to turn the light off and there it was. As someone who has had multiple family members die of cancer, and a grandmother who had been a 40+ year breast cancer survivor, I had usually been on top of monthly self-exams, mammograms, and routine check-ups. But in the midst of all the crazy and making sure others were tended to (you know how WE do!), I had not kept up with them.

The next morning, I made an appointment to see my OB/GYN. You know it’s bad when your doctor gets quiet and calls to make an appointment at the imaging center and schedules an appointment for a biopsy right after. I got the results on December 23. My kids, then ages 15, 13, and 10 were waiting for me in the car. After crying in my doctor’s office for a minute, I wiped away the tears and called my mother. Then I put my game face on and walked out to my car. My kids were none the wiser.

I love Christmas and was NOT going to ruin my favorite holiday with my biopsy results. My husband was still hospitalized, and we weren’t sure if he would be home for Christmas. I wasn’t going to add to the stress with my diagnosis and ruin the holiday season for their lifetimes. I also wanted to wait until I had the MRI done to have more information to share because I was certain they were going to have questions. I waited until January 3 to tell my family.

When my surgeon confirmed my breast cancer diagnosis, he told me I was not going to die from it. My faith and my recently deceased grandmother, a breast cancer survivor who had lived to be 97, made me believe his words. But I saw fear on the faces of my family. My husband, who by this time had made it home from the hospital, was still terribly ill. He was fearful that yet another one of his loved ones was going to die of cancer. My children were fearful they were going to lose both parents at the same time. I told them all to have faith in God’s plans. His plan for me at that moment was to survive, to fight.

I believe our children watch how we as parents handle setbacks and obstacles in our lives. It informs how they will respond to such situations later in their own lives. I said we all have jobs to do. My job for the foreseeable future – beat breast cancer, My husband’s job – get well. The kids’ job – keep going. The best way they could help was to go to school, do their best, and help out at home. And most important, our job was to have faith. In the meantime, I told my friends Susan, Angela, Marianna and Tonya – the Mamma Mafia. They all brought their skills and life experiences. Susan had recently completed cancer treatment, Angela was a nurse, Marianna handled food coordination and flow of information and Tonya had experience with Naval logistics. The Beat Cancer Brigade had begun.

Initially, I was told I wouldn’t need chemo, which I was excited about because of the horror stories I had seen and heard about its side effects. But all that changed when it was determined that I had triple-negative breast cancer which requires intense chemotherapy. Initially, I was upset and actually argued with my doctor about it. But God told me to breathe. And listen. I scheduled an appointment for my port.

As a Type-A person, not having a sense of control was difficult. I decided to get control of what I could and leave the rest to God and the doctors. If my hair was going to fall out, then I was going to color it hot pink before it did. We held a hair-dying party at a salon owned by a neighbor. My daughters, in solidarity, got their ends dyed with me. Marianna coordinated a chemo kick-off party with ladies from the neighborhood. Later when my hair started to really fall out, I let my kids shave my head.

As chemo began, I began to realize just how big our family village is. Marianna’s Meal-Train site quickly filled up with people not only from my neighborhood, but also from our church, from our Jack-N-Jill chapter, and from our school families; old friends and new ones. People who don’t cook supported us in other ways – walking the dog daily, housecleaning during treatment, transporting food and the kids. My family and I were truly humbled by the outpouring of kindness, generosity, prayer, and love from “My Village.”

At least one member of the Mamma Mafia was with me for every appointment and treatment. Sometimes we cried together. Sometimes we sat in silence.

Sometimes we laughed. Sometimes they held me up when I was weary. Always, they were there.

On November 13, 2014, I rang the bell after my final radiation and cancer treatment. That ringing wasn’t just for me; it was for everyone in our village: my husband and children, the Mamma Mafia, and our friends and family, near and far. Together our village beat my breast cancer with kindness, generosity, hope, faith, and love.

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WYBC celebrates Black History EVERYDAY!

Facts from www.blackfacts.com

December 1

1955 – On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to change seats on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. On December 5, blacks began a boycott of the bus system, which continued until shortly after December 13, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed bus segregation in the city.

1940 – Richard Franklin Lennox Pryor III was born in Peoria, Illinois on this day.

December 2

1992 – Maya Angelou is asked to compose a poem for the inauguration of President Bill Clinton

1969 – M.V.B Brown designed a “Home Security System with Television Surveillance” for the homeowner to view the visitor on a television screen and the visitor also able to view a screen. The homeowner could open the door via a manual lock mechanism. Patent No. 3,482,037

December 3

1982 – Thomas Hearns did unify the world titles in the junior middleweight class by capturing the WBC over Wilfredo Benitez on this day.

1970 – The first Black Miss World was Jennifer Josephine Hosten who won the honor on this day.

1847 – Frederick Douglass, along with Martin R Delaney, started “The North Start”, an anti-slavery paper

December 4

1927 – Duke Ellington opened at the Cotton Club in Harlem. In 1923, Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington first began to make his mark in New York with his band The Washingtonians, which took its name from his home city.

1915 – The Great Migration began. Approximately two million Southern Blacks moved to Northern industrial centers in the following decades. Between the turn of the century and 1930, more than 1 million black southerners set out on one of America’s most important mass movements.

1906 – Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. was founded on the campus of Cornell University by seven college men who recognized the need for a strong bond of Brotherhood among African descendants in this country.

December 5

1957 – New York became the first city to legislate against racial or religious discrimination in housing market with adoption of Fair Housing Practices Law.

1955 – Historic bus boycott began in Montgomery. At a mass meeting at the Holt Street Baptist Church Martin Luther King Jr. was elected president of the boycott organization.

December 6

1997 – Lee Brown became Houston’s first black mayor narrowly defeating businessman Rob Mosbacher

1869 – National Black labor convention met in Washington.

1849 – Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland, summer. She returned to the South nineteen times and brought out more than three hundred slaves.

December 7

1941 – Dorie Miller of Waco, Texas, messman on USS Arizona, manned machine gun during Pearl Harbor attacks and downed four planes. He was awarded the Navy Cross.

1931 – Comer Cottrell, founder and president of Pro-Line Corporation (1970), the largest African American owned business in the Southwest and the first African American to be part owner of a major league baseball team (1989) Born

December 8

1987 – On this day, Kurt Lidell Schmoke was inaugurated as the first Black mayor of Baltimore, Maryland.

1936 – NAACP filed first suit in campaign to equalize the salaries of Black and white teachers.

1925 – Entertainer, Sammy Davis Jr was born

December 9

1995 – Kweisi Mfume is unanimously elected President and CEO of the NAACP.

1971 – Bill Picket became the fist Black elected to the National Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame.

1961 – Tanzania proclaimed independent.

1925 – Entertainer, Red Foxx was born

December 10

1982 – Pamela McAllister Johnson became the first Black woman publisher of a mainstream paper, the Ithaca Journal.

1967 – Otis Redding’s career came to a tragic end when the twin engine plane carrying him to a concert date in Wisconsin crashed in Lake Monoma.

1965 – Sugar Ray Robinson permanently retired from boxing

December 11

1964 – Sam Cooke died on this day after demanding entrance into the room of the night manager at a dollar-a-night motel where he was staying. After a brief physical struggle, she fired 3 shots which mortally wounded Mr. Cooke.

1917 – Jazz migration began. Joe Oliver left New Orleans and settled in Chicago and was joined by other stars.

December 12

1995 – Willie Brown defeats incumbent mayor Frank Jordan to become 1st African American mayor of San Francisco

1963 – Kenya proclaimed independent.

1938 – U.S. Supreme Court rules in Missouri that a state must provide equal educational facilities for Blacks within its boundaries. Lloyd Gaines, the plaintiff in the case, disappeared after the decision and was never located.

December 13

1944 – Black women were sworn in for the first time to the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services (WAVES), a women’s naval reserves.

1926 – Carl Erskine is born. He will become a baseball player for the Brooklyn Dodgers

December 14

1980 – Elston Howard was a major League Baseball Player. Catcher for the New York Yankees during the 1950s and 1960s. Nine time All-Star. First Black player to play for the Yankees

1799 – George Washington, dies, his will stipulates that his slaves shall be freed upon the death of his wife, Martha

December 15

2001 – R&B singer Rufus Thomas known for songs such as “Do the Funky Chicken” and “Walking the Dog” died. He was 84.

1943 – San Francisco Sun-Reporter established.

1934 – Death of Maggis Lena Walker (69), first Black woman to head a bank, in Richmond

December 16

1976 – Andrew Young named Ambassador and Chief US Delegate to the United Nations

1973 – O.J. Simpson set an NFL record of 2003 rushing yards in one season.

December 17

1991 – Michael Jordan is named 1991 Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year

1937 – Art Neville is born. He will become a member of the popular singing group, “The Neville Brothers.”

December 18

1989 – Ernest Dickerson wins the New York Film Critics Circle Award for best cinematography for the Spike Lee movie, “Do the Right Thing”.

1865 – Thirteenth Amendment ratified.

December 19

1930 – Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, founded at Howard University in 1913, incorporated.

1910 – North Carolina College founded.

1891 – Charles Randolph Uncles became the first Black priest ordained in the United States on this day in Baltimore, Maryland

December 20

1986 – The first Black network anchor, Max Robinson, who joined ABC’s “World News Tonight” died on this day of complication from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), in Washington, DC.

1983 – Julius Erving scores his 25,000th career point, becoming the ninth professional basketball player to achieve this mark.

1956 – On this day the African American community of Montgomery, Alabama voted unanimously to end its 385 day bus-boycott.

December 21

1988 – Jesse Jackson urges the use of the term “African-American”

1959 – Motown Records established by Berry Gordy Jr.

1941 – Actor Samuel Jackson was born on this day in Washington, DC.

December 22

1873 – Abolitionist Charles Lenox Remond died on this day. He was the first Black lecturer employed by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.

December 23

1919 – Alice H Parker patents the gas heating furnace

1867 – Madame C.J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove on this day, starts a Black hair-care business in Denver, CO; she alters curling irons that were popularized by the French to suit the texture of Black women’s hair.

1815 – Henry Highland Garnet, minister, abolitionist and diplomat, born a slave in Kent County, Maryland.

December 24

1992 – The position of Secretary of Agriculture was awarded to Alphonso Michael “Mike” Espy, making him the first Black to hold this position.

December 25

1907 – Cab Calloway, bandleader and first jazz singer to sell a million records is born in Rochester,NY.

1837 – Mirror of Liberty, Pioneer Black magazine, published in New York City by abolitionist David Ruggles.

December 26

1966 – Kwanzaa originated by Dr.Maulana Karenga is started.

1956 – Birmingham Blacks began mass defiance of Jim Crow bus laws.

1849 – David Ruggles dies in Northampton, Mass. Often called the first African American bookseller for his bookstore established in 1834, Ruggles was an abolitionist, and a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad

December 27

1956 – Federal Judge Dozier Devane granted temporary injunction restraining city officials from interfering with integration of Tallahassee, Fla., city buses and said “every segregation act of every state or city is as dead as a doornail.”

1939 – John Amos, actor, made famous in “Good Times” television program, born.

1892 – Livingstone and Biddle College (now Johnson C. Smith) play the first African American intercollegiate football game

December 28

1977 – Karen Farmer becomes the first African American member of the Daughters of the American Revolution when she traces her ancestry back to William Hood, a solider in the Revolutionary War.

1954 – Actor Denzel Washington was born on this day in Mount Vernon, NY.

December 29

1917 – Thomas Bradley was born on this day in Calvert, Texas and went on to become mayor of Los Angeles by winning 56% of the vote.

1907 – Robert Weaver, born on this day, became the first Black appointed to a presidential cabinet when President Lyndon B. Johnson named him to head the newly created Department of Housing and Urban Development.

December 30

1960 – Two U.S. courts issued temporary injunctions to prevent eviction of about seven hundred Black sharecroppers in Haywood and Fayetter counties, Tennessee.

1928 – Blues composer and singer Bo Didley is born in Magnolia ,Missippi.

December 31

1984 – The first nationally broadcast telethon for the United Negro College fund is held and raises 14.1 million

1948 – Singer Donna Summer, known as “Queen of Disco,” is born on this day in Boston, Massachusetts.

1862 – Residents of Rochester, N.Y., joined Frederick Douglass in a vigil in anticipation of the Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect at midnight.

Facts from www.blackfacts.com