Sea of pink for Komen race to fight breast cancer

The cheers started out loud as the one-year survivors cleared the arches of pink balloons. They picked up as each additional group appeared.

Six-year survivors. Ten-year survivors. Then 20, 25.

The numbers thinned, and then 50-year survivors.

By the time the small woman next to the 60-year survivor sign appeared, the rahs crescendoed into a roar.

Cheers — as well as some tears — abounded at the Susan G. Komen Central Indiana Race for the Cure. An estimated 15,000 people came out to support those who have battled the disease as well as to commemorate those who are no longer here.

When Joreen Caldwell was diagnosed 61 years ago, her doctors told her family that she would not survive six months. The mother of a young son — Caldwell discovered a lump while nursing him — Caldwell was not told of the dire prognosis.

She had a mastectomy and hysterectomy but no chemotherapy; they didn't have it at that time, she said. And then despite all odds, she went on to live. Today at 86, she has long outlived the doctor who diagnosed her, and Saturday, she enjoyed celebrity status.

Many in the crowd wore pink placards listing the names of people for whom they walked, either in memory or in celebration. One sign read, simply, "In celebration of ME!"

Creative pink fashions could be found in every direction, including a wealth of tutus,

With all the women garbed in pink, men were not shying away from that color choice either.

The Warren Central football team has put in an appearance at previous races, but this year the disease hit close to home. Just a few months ago, the young wife of one of their coaches, Kristen Barclay, was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Wearing pink football jerseys and their pads underneath, a phalanx of football players held up the banner announcing the 24th year of the race.

"This really touches our kids," said Candy Handy-Ogle, physical education chair at Warren Central High.

All around the crowd were reminders that breast cancer does not follow any clear rules when it comes to which women will get it

Twelve years ago when LaKisha Sills' doctor felt something concerning in her left breast, she did not follow her doctor's advice to get a mammogram. She was only 29 and there was no cancer in her family.

The next year the doctor detected "a string of pearls." Sills immediately went for a mammogram and learned that she had cancer. She was devastated.

"To me, cancer was a death sentence," she said.

But after surgeries and follow-up treatment Sills returned to living her life, mothering her two children and adopting two younger children. Now her breast cancer experience seems far away.

"I almost forgot about it," she said. "It seems very surreal."

Still, each year she has participated in the Komen Race, looking forward to standing in a sea of survivors like herself. This year was special. It's the first time her mother has joined her at the race.

Two weeks after her last treatment for breast cancer in 2009, Kathy Phillips, 60, participated in the race for the first time. She and a team of 35 to 50 people have joined in each year since.

The Mooresville resident still recalls her first time at the race, walking among the one-year survivors, apprehensive about what the future might hold.

Then, as she stood with each wave of survivors coming up behind her, she began to feel better.

"There were people from 25, 50 years here, and I thought, I'm going to be one of them," she said, adding that she knew then, "everything was going to be OK."

Call Star reporter Shari Rudavsky at (317) 444-6354. Follow her on Twitter: @srudavsky.