Ed Kemmick
When they got together last week at Billings Clinic, Troy Wilson gave Deb Myers a canvas photograph of the two of them, with their partners, at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. They were all wearing their "Save the Peaks" T-shirts, created for a party last summer in Cooke City to celebrate the end of cancer treatments for Myers.
Because she splits her time between Billings and Cooke City, Deb Myers has firsthand knowledge of the different ways people deal with adversity in rural and urban settings.
She learned of the difference in 2006 when her husband rolled his Jeep on a mountain near Cooke City. His death was devastating, but her friends and neighbors helped her out by refusing to pity her. They comforted and supported her, but they also let her know they were sure she’d get through it.
In Billings, on the other hand, she received mostly sympathy, freighted with the message, in Myers’ words, “You poor thing. You’re damaged.”
“I felt so supported by that community (in Cooke City) afterward that I felt so much more comfortable there than I did in Billings,” she said.
The same thing happened last year, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgeries and months of chemotherapy. The message she heard again was that she’d make it because she was tough, and her friends and neighbors in Cooke City would do all they could to help her get there.
“If you live here long enough, tragedies will happen,” Troy Wilson said. “Bad things will happen. But we’ll get you through it.”
Wilson is the owner of the Cooke City Store, which is just down the street from Myers’ Beartooth Café. Of course, everything is just down the street in Cooke City, whose 70 residents are perched atop the Beartooth Highway northeast of Yellowstone National Park.
Wilson is a good friend of Myers. When her husband died in 2006, he was the first one on the scene, and he was there to comfort Myers when she arrived a short time later. Not long after her husband’s death, Wilson spent two days cutting firewood with Myers.
That’s the kind of therapy people understand in Cooke City, Wilson said.
“Cooke City is beyond rural,” Myers said. “It’s Alaska frontier … super-rugged people live there.”
As soon as she was diagnosed with breast cancer just about a year ago, Myers called Wilson, who was also in Billings at the time. They met at the Red Door on the West End and talked for three to four hours.
One thing she said is that she wanted to be well enough to go the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas in mid-December, at which she had been a regular, and to be there for Tough Enough to Wear Pink Night, an annual show of support for breast cancer research and awareness.
Oh, yeah, and she also wanted to have a party to celebrate the end of her treatment.
“It kind of grew after that, because all she said was, ‘I want a party,’” Wilson said.
It soon morphed from a party for Myers into a fundraiser for breast cancer awareness, though at the time they didn’t have a clue what they’d do with any money raised. Wilson became the lead organizer for the party. He came up with the theme one day in August, as he was driving from Red Lodge to Cooke City.
When Pilot and Index peaks came into view on the Beartooth Highway, the thought hit him: “Save the Peaks,” set against an image of those two familiar mountaintops. He soon had pink-and-black T-shirts printed up, and as word spread, all kinds of people were coming into the store asking for one.
Wilson told them they’d have to wait for the party, scheduled for Aug. 9, since they had no idea how many people to expect and didn’t want to run out on the day of the party. The schedule accelerated considerably when the band they wanted, the Bannack Trailers, said in late July that Aug. 9 was the best day for them.
With just two weeks remaining, Wilson — with help from many others in town —went into high gear. The party ended up taking place right alongside the Cooke City Store. The bandstand was two 40-foot flatbed trailers covered with what Wilson described as “a redneck tarp system.”
Myers finished her radiation treatments on Aug. 7, two days before the party, and she was so tired and weak she wasn’t sure she should could even attend. But she took massive amounts of vitamin B12 and not only attended but helped cook. To be able to stand the high heat of the cooking area, she borrowed a cooling vest packed with ice packets from a friend with MS.
The party had barely been advertised, but several hundred people turned out, so many that they spilled into the street, effectively blocking the highway. Wilson said the sheriff drove by at least once but apparently didn’t see any reason to be concerned about the unplanned road closure.
Between the T-shirt sales, a bake sale (including breast-shaped cupcakes) and donations, they raised $5,700 and had $4,300 left after paying for the T-shirts and other expenses.
“I think it’s great we can do such a big thing in a little tiny town,” Wilson said.
Myers, who had retired in 2008 as a master’s-level nurse in clinical research, started looking for good ways to spend the money. Her first thought was establishing some kind of fund to help Cooke City women who had breast cancer. But since the disease strikes about one in eight women and Cooke City was so small, that didn’t seem like much of an option.
Meeting with people at Billings Clinic, where she had been treated, they came up with something better, something perfectly suited to what Myers had learned about the different culture of urban and rural communities.
The plan grew out of her reaction to a hormone regimen, Femara, which is often used to prevent a recurrence of cancer in post-menopausal woman. Her terrible reactions to the regimen — well documented in a Billings Gazette article by Cindy Uken — made her wonder whether women in small towns and rural areas had reactions different from those experienced by women in larger cities like Billings.
She is now doing research on that question, working with Karyl Blaseg, manager of Billings Clinic’s cancer programs. The 2½-year study will involve 100 breast cancer patients being treated at the clinic.
“The research we did, we wanted to make it meaningful to Deb,” Blaseg said.
It may sound like an unusual research subject, but Myers said she thinks the different reactions to the hormone regimen could have a lot to do with lifestyle. The regimen rendered her extremely tired, depressed, with pains in her joints.
She wondered whether women like her, accustomed to strenuous activities every day, whether working, recreating or just getting by, reacted differently than women who engaged in little or no physical activity.
Once that project was launched, it was time for the other goal she’d set for herself: attending the NFR in Las Vegas. She did, in company with her significant other and Wilson and his wife.
They made it to Tough Enough to Wear Pink Night, too, and were surprised to see themselves on the Jumbotron, all wearing their Save the Peaks T-shirts and being applauded by thousands of rodeo fans.
Last week, in a meeting at Billings Clinic, Wilson gave Myers a canvas print of a photograph showing them all at the NFR.
Now they’re planning this summer’s party, set for Aug. 16 at the Cooke City Store. It’ll be hard to top last year’s event, but they’ll give it a shot.
“We’re just going to be more prepared,” Wilson said. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
Details: For photos of last year’s “Save the Peaks” party in Cooke City, check out the Beartooth Cafe’s Facebook page.
