By ALISON KEPNER, The News Journal
Posted Tuesday, July 10, 2007

The faces are familiar: business executives, elected officials, nonprofit leaders. They come from many sectors but are united by a common triumph: They survived cancer.
These are some of their stories.

They have gone public in the hope that sharing their tales will bring awareness to employers and patients.“I grew up at a time when the word ‘cancer’ was always whispered,” said lymphoma survivor Bob Elder, president and chief executive officer of Delaware Sterling Bank. “It was such an ominous word you didn’t say it out loud.”The Advocates of Hope: Raising Cancer Awareness in the Business Community lecture series aims to put a face on the disease, showing the community that people are living with and working with cancer.The series, which is presented by the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, is designed to deliver information about cancer, prevention and available resources to Delaware employers and their employees. It began last month with keynote speaker Vince Papale, former Philadelphia Eagles player and colon cancer survivor. It will continue this fall with talks by Dr. Susan Love, one of the founders of the breast cancer advocacy movement, and Hamilton Jordan, a three-time cancer survivor and former President Jimmy Carter’s chief of staff.The 2007 campaign is dedicated to the memory of Brad Hublein of Wilmington Trust, who died this year after a three-year battle with leukemia.

A survivor channels his own fear into research and action Wilmington City Council President Ted Blunt, 64, has spent 23 years in the public eye as an elected leader. So, when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer five years ago, he decided not to try to hide his diagnosis. Rather, he hoped his role as a public figure would help make others more comfortable discussing the disease.

Having a recognizable face “makes it possible, especially for African-American men, to talk about it, which is something we have not traditionally done,” he said, noting many feel “it’s not ‘macho’ to discuss certain things. You’re not a ‘man’ if you tell everyone you are sick.”Blunt wanted to overcome those stereotypes: “I wanted everyone to know the value and importance of screenings.”His doctor detected his prostate cancer in February 2002 during a routine checkup. When he was given the diagnosis, “the only word I heard was ‘cancer,’ ” Blunt said. “To me as well as a lot of people, when the word cancer was used, it represented death.”Blunt was frustrated, depressed, scared: “I thought the end was inevitable.”He soon funneled that energy into action, researching the best doctors and treatments and preparing questions to interview prospective surgeons. As he researched the disease, Blunt discovered many more treatment options existed than he realized. He and his New York City-based doctor ultimately decided on radical prostatectomy, a surgery to remove the prostate. Five years later, he is in good health and planning his future, including a run for lieutenant governor.