On Saturday, Betsy Lavender will lead a team in the "Be a Part of the Cure Walk" hosted by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute in Little Rock. It will be her second year to participate in the walk, and she hopes to raise even more money than she did last year, when her team took top fundraising honors in the individuals category.
"It was a fabulous environment that day," Lavender says, noting that more than 1,000 people participated in 2022. "Having that many people there, it was just incredible."
UAMS started the walk in 2021 to honor patients with all forms of cancer and raise money for cancer research. Last year, the walk raised about $250,000.
For Lavender, 52, a colorectal cancer survivor, participating is part of her mission to encourage people to get screened for colorectal cancer. She is especially interested in raising awareness of early onset colorectal cancer, which occurs in people under age 45 and is on the rise. Lavender was 42 when she was diagnosed. And she found out the hard way.
"I had no reason to believe I was sick," she says. "I was tired all of the time, but I was going nonstop, and I always have." After a business trip in September 2012, however, she knew something was wrong. She called her parents to say she wanted to come home to Texarkana to see a doctor. Once there, she ended up in the emergency room of a local hospital where she learned she had a cancerous tumor in her colon. She then went to UAMS, where she says the care she received saved her life.
LIVING ON THE 'LINE'
After radiation, chemotherapy and surgery at UAMS, Lavender spent time recuperating in Texarkana at her family home. There, she had the strong family support she had known since childhood.
She was born in Fayetteville in 1970 while her father, Bill Lavender, was finishing law school at the University of Arkansas. Upon graduation, he moved his family to Texarkana, where he joined a local law firm. They lived on the Arkansas side, which she calls the "good side" of Texarkana. Texarkana is actually two cities -- one in Texas and one in Arkansas -- divided by the Texas-Arkansas state line.
"I'm most grateful to have grown up in my family and in Texarkana," Lavender says. "It was a great place to grow up." In the summers, she says, they went swimming, set up Kool-Aid stands and played wiffleball. At Christmas, she and her family, which included a younger sister and brother, would carol throughout the neighborhood. They would also make fudge and cookies to deliver to the neighbors, and they regularly visited nursing homes where her family and another local family would entertain the residents. Her mother would play piano and they would all sing.
"My mother was a stay-at-home mom, but she was always involved in things," Lavender says, adding that her mother was "always the fun mom." Her father, on the other hand, was more serious and disciplined as he worked hard at his law practice. He was also a "big, big" Razorback fan, she says, a passion she shares with him.
In high school, Lavender was very involved in "almost every activity," she says. She was a member of both the Young Democrats group and the Teenage Republicans. She was on student council and attended Girls' State and the Governor's School, a summer program then held at Hendrix College. She also helped local candidates campaign, putting up yard signs and other tasks.
Traveling was another favorite activity of the Lavender family, she says. Her mother would take them on trips in the summer while her father stayed home to work. They would go to the beach, to the Smoky Mountains, to Disney World, Cape Canaveral and more. On spring breaks, her father would join them for excursions to Disneyland and snow skiing.
"We had gone to almost every state by the time I graduated high school," she says, adding that after high school she and her mother and sister traveled even more. "We would go to different countries."
COLLEGE DAYS
Upon graduation from high school, Lavender headed to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville where she studied advertising and public relations. She joined Chi Omega sorority and was an Associated Student Government (ASG) representative. And she returned to working on campaigns when a friend ran for student body president.
"It was the campaign part that was the fun part for me," she says. "It was the change and not knowing what was going to happen ... dealing with what was thrown at you and making the best way out of it."
During the race for ASG president, Lavender says, her friend's opponent had more money and used it to make professional yard signs. Undaunted, her team countered by putting attention-grabbing balloons on her friend's homemade signs. Her friend won.
"That was a lot of fun," she says, adding that it was the first time she was involved in developing strategy for a political race.
In the summer after her junior year, she landed a coveted internship in Sen. Dale Bumpers' office in Washington. "It was a wonderful experience being on the 'Hill,'" she says. They saw the sights, Lavender says, but her small crew of interns stayed busy with work.
While in college, she also worked on what she calls her first "real" political campaign when Sheffield Nelson ran against the incumbent governor, Bill Clinton, in the 1990 gubernatorial campaign. Then, during her senior year, she caught the political bug big-time when she joined a group of students on a whirlwind trip to Iowa to support Clinton's campaign for president.
"We left on a Saturday morning and drove all day," she recalls. "We got there, and it was snowing. We passed out Clinton buttons and stickers." After dinner, where they met Clinton and his wife, Hillary, they got back on the charter bus and headed home.
TO LITTLE ROCK AND BEYOND
Upon graduation from college, Lavender moved to Little Rock to work for Alltel's wireless company in customer service. It was the beginning of the wireless telecommunications industry, and Alltel was poised to be a big player. Lavender would spend 14 years at Alltel, moving up to a position where she worked on the development of Alltel's national wireless footprint with a partnership that put Alltel stores in Walmart stores across the nation.
In 2006, the campaign bug struck again when Lavender was invited to a local fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, who was running for re-election to the U.S. Senate. Then in 2007, Lavender helped with another fundraiser for Hillary, this time as part of her first presidential bid. After that successful event, Lavender was offered a full-time campaign job, working with the media. She accepted and soon found herself in the fast-paced, sometimes chaotic, world of a presidential campaign. On her first trip to Iowa in September 2007, she thought she would only be there a few days and packed accordingly. To her surprise, she didn't return home to Little Rock until Dec. 13, and then for only a short stay, and had to miss Christmas with her family. Still, she thrived in the unpredictable, always-on lifestyle.
"I love it to this day," she says. "Anything that is thrown at me doesn't rattle me."
After Hillary Clinton's campaign ended before the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver, Lavender went on a trip to Africa where the Clinton Foundation had several programs. She then traveled to Denver to work with media logistics for the Democratic National Convention. After Barack Obama was elected president and Joe Biden became vice president, Lavender helped with inaugural festivities and then began coordinating travel arrangements for Biden and his family.
BECOMING A SURVIVOR
In September 2012, Lavender was on her way home to Little Rock from the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., when she began feeling ill. She had coordinated travel plans for Biden and his family and had stayed up all night making sure everyone made flights back home. She was very tired, naturally, but it was more than that. She knew something was wrong, so she planned to drive to Texarkana to see a doctor her family knew.
After arriving at her parents' home, she felt worse and went to the local hospital where she found out she had colorectal cancer. Her Texarkana doctor recommended that she go to UAMS in Little Rock for treatment. That was good news for Lavender because she was already familiar with UAMS. Her father had surgery there, and the experience was good. "I remembered that I loved everything at UAMS then," she says. "I felt comfortable."
Lavender's experience would be positive as well. She attributes her good outcome to the doctors, especially her surgeon, Dr. Jason Mizell, and her oncologist, Dr. Sam Makhoul (now at CARTI), nurses and other staff who helped in her recovery. That support was vital, she adds.
"Sometimes, I think it was better than any drug they could have given me," she says. "It was coming here and feeling supported, and there wasn't a time that I have ever been scared."
After recovering, she moved back to Fayetteville, where she had always hoped to return, and began focusing on fundraising projects. She also took on a new role to raise awareness of colorectal cancer and promote screening for the disease. According to the American Cancer Society, screening can often find colorectal cancer early, before it has spread, making it easier to treat. In addition, regular screening can prevent colorectal cancer by allowing doctors to find and remove polyps before they turn into cancer.
"My mission is to promote timely screenings," she says. "So during Colon Cancer Month [March], I'm a beast about promoting screenings. I drive everybody crazy."
Her longtime friend Keisha Merritt of Bentonville can attest to Lavender's persistence. She says Lavender reminds her regularly to get screened, noting that colorectal cancer disproportionately affects the Black community. Black Americans are about 20% more likely to get colorectal cancer and about 40% more likely to die from it than other ethnic groups.
"I've gotten a [regular] colonoscopy since I was 10 years old," Merritt says. "I don't need her to convince me, but there could not be a better ambassador for UAMS. She's had this special experience there, and she loves to share it with everyone."
The American Cancer Society suggests that people with average risk for colorectal cancer should get screened starting at age 45. But in recent years, there has been a rise in early-onset colorectal cancer, which refers to cases that occur before age 45. Lavender had early-onset colorectal cancer. Oftentimes, younger patients don't get timely diagnoses because doctors don't think they are old enough to have colorectal cancer, she says.
"It's not just awareness for the patient to do their screenings," she says. "It's awareness for the doctors out there that have people coming to them with issues to know that these people are not too young."
FIGHTING BACK
In 2016, Lavender caught the attention of Katie Couric, the former co-anchor of NBC's Today Show, who led a national colorectal cancer awareness campaign in the late 1990s after her husband, Jay Monahan, died from the disease at age 42. Couric invited Lavender to attend the Stand Up to Cancer telethon in Los Angeles, which Couric had co-founded to raise money for cancer research.
"Betsy Lavender has been such a tireless warrior and powerful voice about the importance of early detection for colon cancer," Couric says. "She is literally living proof that screening saves lives. And the fact that she's willing to scream it from the mountaintops makes me love her even more."
Most recently, Lavender has been involved with the "Be a Part of the Cure Walk" hosted by the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute. This year, she is already at work on raising money and recruiting a team of walkers for the third annual walk, which starts at 8:30 a.m. Saturday at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock. Participants can choose to do a 1K or 5K route (both are wheelchair and stroller accessible). In addition to the walk, there will be drawings, games, entertainment and retail booths. Also, tours of the MammoVan, UAMS' mobile mammography unit, will be offered. Gates open and registration begins at 6:30 p.m.
By helping with projects such as the walk, Lavender is doing her part to help build momentum for UAMS as it prepares to apply for the NCI Designation from the National Cancer Institute. According to the UAMS website, the "NCI Designation is a highly competitive assessment process during which cancer centers must demonstrate outstanding depth and breadth of high-quality cancer research and treatment." UAMS says the economic impact on Arkansas could be $72 million, with 1,500 new jobs created over five years.
"UAMS is Arkansas' cancer center," Lavender says, adding that she encourages Arkansans with cancer to consider UAMS for treatment.
Longtime friends are not surprised at Lavender's dedication to colorectal cancer awareness and prevention.
"She has a way of just making people's lives better," Merritt says. "She's just a great connector."
Tera Futrell Kesterson of Nashville in Howard County, who met Lavender in college as Chi Omega sorority sisters, says Lavender is a "great friend" to many and inspired others with her courage, especially during her recovery from colorectal cancer.
"She never wallowed in it," Kesterson says. "She just kept moving forward and kept educating people, and every time we have someone we know get cancer, Betsy's the first one there to guide them through that initial diagnosis."
For Lavender, staying positive is key to dealing with cancer and all of life's challenges.
"I think attitude probably was most important to me," she says, adding that it is important never to give up and "to make the best of everything."