Brinker read all the information she could get about breast cancer and discussed it with everyone she came across.
"I wanted to see how big the disease really was," she said. What she found shocked her: 59,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War. In that same period, she said, 339,000 American women died of breast cancer.
In 1982, armed with $200, a telephone and a shoebox full of contacts, Brinker and a few friends began finding means and ways of getting the word out through a new organization they launched: the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
"We knew we had a big job. We had to make a cultural change," Brinker said. "I was afraid to fail ... for my sister."
By the end of its first year, the foundation had raised more than $150,000. Brinker lived by the philosophy that hard work would get her to her goal. "This is a country of can-do," she said. "Don't take 'no' for an answer."
That attitude and passion kept the foundation growing rapidly. The organization got a big boost when former First Lady Betty Ford, herself a survivor of breast cancer, joined the Komen team. By then, cancer researchers were calling in asking for help, and patients were finding a new source for information and discussion.
Then Brinker found out she had become more than a breast cancer advocate. A lump in her breast was found to be malignant. She had breast cancer.
The diagnosis was terrifying, but Brinker's vast support network and knowledge of the disease and its research gave her resources and an awareness of available treatment that her sister had not known until it was too late. "I had a more educated attitude," Brinker said, "[but] I was every bit as afraid."
The cancer was detected early, and Brinker had a lumpectomy and chemotherapy treatments. She's reluctant to claim she is cancer-free and said she still has difficulty talking about the experience.
Since then, Brinker's determination to end breast cancer has only grown, as has the Komen Foundation. In just over 20 years, the organization has awarded more than $144 million for breast cancer research alone. And more than donating dollars, the foundation has raised national awareness of the disease, lifting the discussion from shamed whispers to the emboldened, impassioned voices of millions of men and women who have participated in the foundation's signature event: the Komen Race For The Cure.
Brinker was brainstorming how to raise money and awareness of cancer when she hit upon the idea of a 5-kilometer run/walk. It was the perfect event, she felt — celebratory, visual and impactful. But would anyone attend?
"Everyone told me it wouldn't work," Brinker said. "Everyone."
At the first Komen Race For The Cure, on a drizzly Dallas day, 800 people turned out, cancer survivors and friends alike. Since then, races have taken place in hundreds of locales. In 2003 alone, more than 1 million people participated around the world, and many more contributed.
Since that first year, Brinker has learned not only how to run an organization but how to change the world. She has traveled internationally telling her story and educating people about breast cancer, talking with everyone from presidents and kings to the women and men who come up to her at Komen events, each one touched somehow by the disease.
"Frankly, what I've done all my life is network with people," Brinker said. "My style is not to influence people; my style is to educate people and connect them."
In 2001, she was nominated by President George W. Bush to become the U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Hungary, where she had traveled in 2000 as a delegate for the World Health Organization. "I didn't really want to go overseas," Brinker said. "It was a very different culture." But she felt that she could contribute something abroad. In Hungary, she said, the lifespan of the population was much shorter than in the United States, and the rate of breast cancer very high.
As U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Hungary, Nancy Brinker (second from right) leads a walk for breast cancer awareness over the historic Chain Bridge in Budapest in 2002.
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As ambassador, Brinker's role as a leader in the fight against breast cancer, and for women's health issues in general, was never far from her mind. In October 2002, she and her colleagues lighted a pathway to the cause of breast cancer education — literally. After an educational seminar in Budapest, Hungary, hundreds of women and men marched across the city's Chain Bridge, illuminated in pink to support the cause. "We raised money, but we also raised awareness," Brinker said.
Indeed, the Komen Foundation's mission has already begun to see results. Since the foundation's existence, the mortality rate for women with breast cancer is down and the rate of early detection up. Research has provided new medicines and procedures, affording each person her or his own best form of treatment. Research has also given clues to the origins of breast cancer, key to ending the disease.
Some of that research has been done in a place close to Brinker's heart. Renowned cancer researcher Benita Katzenellenbogen, a UI professor of physiology and of cell and structural biology who holds a Swanlund Chair, has examined the disease for more than 25 years, funded in part by the Komen Foundation. Its funding has been critical in times of tight government spending, said Katzenellenbogen, who cites the foundation as having "tremendous impact" and credits Brinker for putting the issue in the public eye.
For Brinker, the Komen Foundation and the fight against breast cancer are always, and will always be, a part of her life — until breast cancer is cured and "as long as I keep standing," said Brinker. "Every day I wake up there's something for the Komen Foundation."
And every day she wakes up, she remembers her big sister, the inspiration for the foundation that has helped educate and treat millions in the fight against breast cancer.
"I miss her every day of my life," Brinker said, her eyes tearing up as she looks away. "I think she would have been proud of what we've done."
