Today marks the fifth
anniversary of the passing of Barbara Anderson, at 2:40 p.m. on April 8,
2016. It's hard to believe that five years have passed us by and
how much the world has changed over that period. I often wonder,
if she was still with us, "what would Barbara think?" Barbara was
always an optimistic "the glass is half full" type. With the way
things are going I wonder if she'd have remained so. Knowing her
as well as I did, I believe she would still look for the bright, good
side with her usual optimism.
A few remembrance
pictures follow:
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|
Barbara Anderson
— 1980 |
Barbara Anderson
—
2010 |
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Barbara at her desk at CLT's
first
Tremont Street Boston office, above Papa Gino's |
"Preacher Anderson"
— January 1990
Boston Globe Magazine cover |
Barbara was diagnosed
with
Waldenström's macroglobulinemia, (WM), a rare, incurable disease
with only some 1,500 cases per year in the U.S. She agreed to
undergo experimental therapy with a cancer researcher at the Dana Farber
Cancer Institute in Boston in early-2002. Upon our return from her
latest treatment Barbara fell very ill, took the medication provided to
her if such a situation occurred. We had a
news conference scheduled at the State House planned for the
following afternoon (April 13, 2002) which she hoped to be recovered
enough to attend.
The next morning I
found her on the floor alongside her bed, unconscious. I lifted
her back onto the bed then immediately called her Dana Farber doctor who
advised me to call 9-1-1- for an ambulance. Salem Hospital had her
flown by helicopter to the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston
— she had suffered a fractured skull from
the fall they'd discovered. Needless to say the CLT news
conference was cancelled.
Her son Lance flew out
from Nevada and we took shifts at her bedside. She was given less
than one percent chance of coming out of her coma.
She regained consciousness six days later, survived, and left the
hospital for home on May 11.
We found another cancer
specialist who provided his own experimental therapy
— which miraculously put her WM in
remission. He had advised that his therapy had a possibility of
leading to leukemia down the road. Barbara's response was "So I
have a choice of dying from an incurable disease (WM) or taking a chance
on leukemia 'down the road'? Let's head down that road!" The
leukemia was discovered in her a dozen years later. It was
treatable for a year or so but treatments became necessary at shorter
and shorter intervals — first every couple
months, eventually weekly, and that became not enough. Finally
Barbara decided she'd had enough of delaying the inevitable and
terminated the treatment. She passed away a couple of months
later, her final few days in a hospice care home.
Five years and a week
or two ago Barbara and I had a deep conversation one evening about what
was coming. Her greatest concern was what would happen to
Proposition 2½ and CLT when she was gone.
She worried what would happen to senior citizens who could be taxed out
of their homes if property tax limitations were removed. That was
when I made my vow to her that, along with Chip Faulkner, I would keep
CLT going and defending Proposition 2½ for as long as I could, "for as
long as humanly possible."
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The Boston Herald's April 9,
2016 front page
reporting Barbara's death |
Barbara's cat Gilly seemingly
mourning atop
The Boston Herald's front page |
Barbara
in our yard, August 20, 2014
Photo by CLT member Guy Kern
(I inherited and am still driving her 2001 Honda CRV)
The
Salem News
Editorial Cartoon by Christopher Smigliano
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
