Photo provided by Sisters’ Journey. Valerie Simmons (left) with daughter Lisa Reeves (right)

Sisters’ Journey Survivor of the Month – Valerie L. Simmons.

Read her story (thanks www.sistersjourney.org)

Hi, my name is Valerie L. Simmons. I live in Westchester County, Yonkers, New York. I am a retiree from the Westchester County Department of Social Service for the State of New York.

As we all know, years ago women of color did not go for annual gynecological, mammogram, or colonoscopy exams, so I was not aware of any history of cancer in my family. However, later in life, I heard of unsubstantiated ovarian, colon and pancreatic cancers that may have had taken precious family lives. However, and unfortunately, I did become aware that I lost my younger sister to pancreatic cancer eight years ago, and also that I had an aunt who succumbed to ovarian cancer approximately 50 years ago. I am not sure if there is a relationship to my diagnosis or not. Prior to this experience, I was in good health. I had no health issues.

As I grew older, these exams became more available to us. At the age of 64, I felt a lump under my left breast. As it was time for my annual mammogram, I brought it to the attention of my gynecologist. My gynecologist felt it was a benign cyst. However, I insisted that I get an ultrasound as well as a mammogram. As a result, the tumor was located, and it was malignant. Within three weeks I had surgery, a lumpectomy, on February 10, 2014.

My treatment consisted of five months of chemotherapy and two months of radiation for the lumpectomy and removal of 10-12 lymph nodes. My best friend went to radiation with me every day. I was not sure if the lymph nodes were malignant or not. The doctor stated I had triple negative breast cancer which tends to be aggressive. The effect of the treatments caused me to lose my hair.

In July 2022, I noticed my left arm was larger than my right. I went to my oncologist who sent me for a CT scan, therapy once a week for lymphedema, which developed because of the surgery for breast cancer. In addition to my medical team, my six children and seven grandchildren have been by my side the whole time – faithfully attending my appointments with me. They have given me the support and courage that I needed to sustain this journey I have traveled these past years. With God’s grace and seeing my surgeons and medical doctors every six months, I am now a survivor going on 10 years.

 

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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