Death Takes a Holiday After Cancer Victim Outruns It

--Conquering challenges is a way of life for Dick Molen of Carmel, Calif. So, while other tourists were content just to see the Great Wall of China, Molen and his wife, Jan, took off on a run along the wall that covered 26 miles in six hours. “I’m delirious. I’m going to drink a case of beer,” Molen, 54, said after the feat. The marathon-length run was the latest chapter in a story that the Molens say will soon be a Hollywood movie. When doctors told him in 1978 that he would be dead in a year from cancer of the lymph system, Molen said he decided “to fight it there and then.” He took up distance running and weightlifting and adopted a fruit-and-vegetable diet. In addition, he underwent five operations and radiation treatment and, in nine months, tests showed the cancer was gone. “The doctors were flabbergasted,” Molen told an interviewer. From his cancer battle, he went on to conquer the marathon, completing several major races, including the Boston Marathon, where he finished ninth among runners age 48 and older, in a time of 2 hours, 51 minutes. “I want to be an inspiration to people who have terminal illnesses,” he said. “Just because some doctor says you’re going to die of cancer, don’t take it at face value. Do something about it.”

--Ezra Taft Benson’s family helped the president of the Mormon Church’s Council of the Twelve Apostles celebrate his 86th birthday in Salt Lake City during the weekend, and church associates held an informal reception for him Monday. Benson is next in line to become president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

--In 1972, a 12-year-old Chinese girl named Shen Ding presented then-President Richard M. Nixon with a bouquet of flowers in Peking’s Great Hall of the People. And now, thanks in part she says to Nixon’s efforts to improve diplomatic relations with China, she has become the bride of an American. “I want to thank him again for visiting us,” Ding said in an interview in her new home in Farmington, Mich. “Because all this--my marriage, none of it--could have happened without his visit.” Ding met her husband, Jim Butler, when he was in Peking to install computers for a Chinese company. “She was a happy little girl when I first met her in China,” Nixon said in a statement issued through an aide. “I hope she will be just as happy here, and I congratulate her on her marriage.”