Jennifer Moody

Continuing with interesting stories I’ve covered, A-Z, in 14 years:

(Click here for postings on A, here for B)

C is for chemotherapy, crucifix and carousel

– Marlene Susnik never considered herself brave, or strong, or anything particularly special. She was, she said, just trying to move past the colon cancer that was keeping her from her regular life.

Part of her regular life was teaching third-graders at Liberty Elementary School. So, for three days every other week, she would plug her portable chemotherapy pump into a port in her neck, slip the machine into a backpack and go to work.

“I don’t do illness well,” she told me at the time, in March 2008. Being at school helped keep her mind focused on where she wanted to be, where she felt the best. Carrying her medicine with her simply allowed her to do that. We put together a story and a video to show the world her efforts. (For some reason, the DH version isn’t accessible, but the same story and video ran in the Gazette-Times.)

Not everyone has the same experience. We did a story on another Albany teacher, Marlana Graham of Clover Ridge, whose chemotherapy left her so overwhelmingly fatigued and in pain that, most days, she couldn’t even climb the stairs to her bedroom. Graham was floored to discover – and so was I, in listening to her – that hair loss from the drugs includes nose hairs. She found she had to carry tissues everywhere because nothing was left to catch everyday mucous.

At this writing, both teachers have beaten down their respective cancers and are back at their jobs.

– The crucifix issue came up in February 2008, when some of the kids involved came by our office to tell us the administration of South Albany High School was discriminating against them by telling them they couldn’t wear the symbols. I wasn’t there when they arrived, but they left a phone number, and I put together this story (again, the GT version).

I did not know then, nor do I know now, whether the boys involved really were gang members. But then, as now, I feel that’s beside the point. The real question, as I saw it, was whether schools, law enforcement, or anyone else can treat the symbolism of a crucifix the same way they would treat a kid’s shoelaces or belt buckle or ball cap. Are they the same? What about a yarmukle or a Star of David; are they the same as a regular ol’ piece of jewelry or clothing? What about a Muslim head scarf? If the answer is yes, why haven’t crucifixes been banned at South outright, from blond cheerleaders on down? And if the answer is no, these are different, what rules should apply if they’re misused?

This story, too, went national. I was disappointed that many (although not all) of the comments we received focused strictly on the boys’ behavior and whether the principal’s assessment of their backgrounds was correct. I don’t think the question is whether you’re “good” enough to wear a crucifix, it’s whether a crucifix is, or should, be treated differently. I have no answers to this myself; it was what the story was trying to explore.

– The story of the carousel takes me back to the late 1990s, when my best college buddy and I were shopping in Salem and took a wrong turn on the skybridge at the downtown mall. Suddenly we found ourselves at the carving studio for what would become the Salem Riverfront Carousel.

I was blown away. Hand-carved carousel horses. Hand-painted, too. Each horse with its own story, each with tiny details lovingly commemorating its individual sponsor. And all done by volunteers!

“Are any of these volunteers from the mid-valley?” I asked, crossing my fingers. Any excuse to find out more, to bring this story home with me.

Yes, I learned. An Albany carver had just begun volunteering.

Photographer Mark Ylen and I were up there within a few days. And a few years later, in 2002, Albany took on a similar project. I have been taking visitors to see the local studio ever since.

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