10.09.2007
Scrappers raise funds for cancer victim
Ansley Wolffis was bright, energetic and full of life.
You can see her personality in her sister’s scrapbook. It’s full of photographs that show a smiling, dark-haired young woman, her arm slung warmly around a friend’s shoulders.
You can imagine her charm when family members speak of her while they pore over mementoes from beach vacations and mission trips to Africa.
You can get a sense of Wolffis’ charisma from the people who knew her and the images she left behind, but you can’t experience it for yourself.
Wolffis died in February from breast cancer, after fighting for her life for three years, just one of 40,000 women and 2,000 men in the United States who will die from breast cancer this year.
“God carried us through those three years,” her sister, Kelsey Dumoulin, said.
On Sept. 29, Wolffis would have been 38. On that date, just over a week ago, Dumoulin; their mother, Terry Greene; Wolffis’ husband, Todd; her son Colby, 10; daughter Graylyn, 5; and several friends joined about 80 others to participate in the first Scrap Pink Scraptacular Crop Event at Scrapbook Traditions in the 690 Jonestown Road shopping center.
The Scraptacular was a national event, sponsored by the magazine Scrapbooks etc. to benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure (formerly the Susan G. Komen Foundation). The local session, which was dedicated to Wolffis, raised more than $700. Tracy Gilley, the owner of Scrapbook Traditions and the organizer of the local Scraptacular, donated $10 from each $45 admission fee. Other shops in the shopping center also participated and contributed percentages from such things as mini-makeovers. Helen Naples provided space for the overflow croppers in her Women’s Wellness & Fitness health club.
Scrapping - or cropping, as participants call it - is the practice of taking photographs, ticket stubs, seashells, any mementoes imaginable and arranging them on decorative papers with typography, borders and buttons - whatever. If it can be glued to a page, croppers will use it.
“Scrapbooking is fun and very addicting, but it is also extremely important,” Gilley said. “We are the historians of our families.”
Pink balloons and T-shirts in shades from powder pink to fuchsia dotted the large, mirrored room. The murmur of voices rose and fell as croppers bent intently over their materials. Breast-cancer survivor Sheryl Crow sang about good times over the stereo speakers placed about the room.
Hazel Talton, a marketing representative from the Breast Clinic, reminded the participants of the importance of early detection in curing breast cancer and urged them to get regular exams and mammograms.
Talton also talked about the work of the Komen group, which provided $25,000 to the Breast Clinic this year for outreach to Hispanic women who may not otherwise have access to breast exams and mammograms.
The Komen group serves 10 Northwest North Carolina counties: Alamance, Davidson, Davie, Forsyth, Guilford, Randolph, Stokes, Surry, Wilkes and Yadkin. Its aim is to find a cure for breast cancer in our lifetime and to “empower women to take an active role in their health care.”
“The greatest risk factors for breast cancer are being a woman and getting older,” Talton said.
When Wolffis was 34, doctors diagnosed Stage 4 (the most advanced) breast cancer, Dumoulin said. Her family was devastated. Then, the doctors said that they were mistaken and that Wolffis actually had Stage 2 breast cancer and Stage 2 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Her family breathed a sigh of relief. Wolffis had a single mastectomy and chemotherapy to treat the breast cancer, and radiation for both cancers. After about a year, she was declared cancer free.
Two months later, the cancer came back, and this time it spread to her brain, liver and bones.
During the time that Wolffis was thought to be cancer-free, her father, Van Aulbert, surprised his whole family - his second wife, also named Terry; three daughters; their two husbands; and four grandchildren - with a trip to Disney World.
Wolffis and Dumoulin recorded the trip in a scrapbook - in triplicate. It took about six months. They gave a copy to Aulbert the following Christmas.
Most people at the Scraptacular said that they don’t like to crop alone. Some of them have rooms in their homes where they gather to crop. There are cropping conventions and such activities as the Scraptacular, and people go on cropping vacations and retreats.
Wolffis got Dumoulin into cropping, and the two spent hours with each other and with friends working on their pages.
“The last outing we ever had was the week before she went to the hospital for the last time,” Dumoulin said.
Some men crop, but it’s mostly women. Groups of four or five, gathered around tables, sharing stories, memories and advice, bring to mind a quilting bee with photos and paper instead of fabric and batting.
And like quilters, croppers preserve family histories and create archives of shared experiences.
Dumoulin said that their husbands thought that cropping was kind of silly until they saw the scrapbooks at the funeral.
“There’s a story behind the photos,” Dumoulin said. “It’s an incredible way to preserve memories.”
Be aware
Early detection is the best strategy for surviving breast cancer. Susan G. Komen for the Cure recommends these precautions:
- Have a mammogram every year starting at age 40.
- Have a clinical breast exam by your doctor or nurse at least every three years starting at age 20, and every year after the age of 40.
- Do Breast Self-Exam, or BSE, each month starting by the age of 20.
Source: Susan G. Komen for the Cure