Fighting Back

Ginny Ueberroth, blessed with a happy family and a famous husband, ran into the same grim roadblock faced by thousands of women--breast cancer. She not only conquered it but devotes a lot of her time to making sure that others have a chance to cope with the dread disease. Her story.

Ginny Ueberroth’s arms are a mass of goose bumps as she guides a golf cart around a bend. The blustery winds have blown the haze off the horizon and the green lawns of the Laguna Niguel golf course shimmer against the blue sea.

On this unusually cold May morning, Ueberroth is driving through the Links at Monarch Beach, scene of Monday’s High Priority Celebrity Golf Classic. As honorary chairmen of the cancer research fund-raising event, Ueberroth and husband, Peter, Olympics Wunderkind and commissioner of baseball, are spending more time than usual on the 18 holes overlooking the ocean. And not just to play golf.

In fact, although Peter is an avid golfer, Ginny hasn’t played in years. She is heading up the classic for one reason: to help spread the word that women do not have to die of breast cancer.

With the icy wind ripping through her cropped mahogany hair, Ueberroth struggles to keep a warm smile on her face as a photographer snaps her picture. Publicity-shy and private about her life, she rarely grants interviews. She smiles through gritted teeth. A photo session in an unfriendly wind is a small price to pay when it comes to saving lives.

Ueberroth was 35 when she discovered a lump in her breast. With family gathered in Laguna Beach that summer in 1976, she underwent a modified mastectomy. Peter took several weeks off to help her recover. The lump was gone, but the memory of her brush with breast cancer was not, and it paved the way for her current crusade.

As a survivor, Ueberroth wants women to know they must take responsibility for their lives; that they can prevent breast cancer through early detection.

“It’s so simple, and yet it used to be something nobody talked about,” she says, still shivering from the sea breeze. “I had hardly even heard of breast cancer when I got it. It just wasn’t talked about. But now that we know how to prevent it, we have to talk about it.”

A few months ago, a scare in the family served as a solemn reminder of that summer 12 years ago. In February, her 25-year-old daughter, Vicki, discovered a lump in her breast.

Vicki, now three months pregnant, had the lump removed. When the doctors found it to be benign, she breathed a sigh of relief but vowed to continue her own breast checks and begin yearly mammograms.

“I was very concerned about my daughters because there were so many statistics saying that it would happen to them,” Ueberroth says. “I didn’t want them grow says. “I didn’t want them growing up believing that. On the other hand, I didn’t want them to be foolish. Maybe they’ll have it and maybe they won’t, but I don’t want them to live in fear just because I had it.”

Trying to warm up after the chilly morning on the greens, Ueberroth is brewing coffee in her almond-colored kitchen in Laguna Beach and talking about one of her favorite topics: her family. With the first grandchild due in early autumn, family history is in the making. Schedules will begin to center on the baby, and new parents Vicki and Bill will be driving from Los Angeles to Orange County more often to see the new grandparents.

The sleek, cream-colored house that hugs a hillside in north Laguna will be the scene of more and more family gatherings. Like a couple of schoolgirls discussing the next dance, mother and daughter make little effort to hide their giddiness. It is clear that the Ueberroth clan will make quite a welcoming committee for the new baby.

The baby may well have played a major role also in Peter’s surprise announcement this week that he would not serve a second term as baseball commissioner. “He wants to spend more time with the family,” his wife said, adding that she did not know what he plans to do next, although she says he’s looking forward to attracting less attention for a while. “He’s had such a visible job in the past,” she said, making no secret of the fact that she’s happy with his decision.

“It’s still almost two years away so we’ll still have some involvement in New York. He really enjoys New York, but he’d rather make (California) his headquarters in what he does, and who knows what he’ll do? But he likes California so much.”

“He loves the ocean. . . . Now he’s a skin diver . . . and he spends a lot of time in the water.”

Slim and vivacious, with eyes that crinkle when she smiles, Ueberroth could be mistaken for a younger woman. As she smoothes the wrinkles from her navy blue linen pants, she recites the family’s whereabouts: Peter is out of town on business, daughter Heidi is in France and the youngest children, Keri and Joe, are in college.

Another chapter in Ueberroth history began when Ginny and Peter bought their apartment in Manhattan two years ago, where they now spend a third of the year. The Upper East Side address is close enough to Peter’s Park Avenue office that he can walk to work, and the couple enjoyed trading California’s traffic jams for a neighborhood where they “can walk to everything.” The rest of the time is split between traveling (both business and pleasure) and relaxing in Laguna.

As a native Californian, Ueberroth has spent nearly her whole life in the state, rarely forced to venture into unfamiliar territory. But discovering New York has been a dream, full of excitement and novelty.

Not that previous years lacked excitement. Married to an organizational wizard of international repute, her adult life has had its share of spills and thrills.

The Ueberroths--focus of intense public attention since Peter triumphantly operated the 1984 Olympic Games--began their married lives in conventional fashion. After meeting at San Jose State in 1958, they were wed soon after in Long Beach. With $500 between them, they began their marriage in a Honolulu apartment that was so small “you had to stand outside the door to photograph somebody inside,” Peter writes in his 1985 book, Made In America.

But it wasn’t long before Peter’s entrepreneurial skills drew attention. After selling copying machines and managing a charter airline, Peter racked up his first major business coup by creating the First Travel Corp. and turning it into the second-largest travel enterprise in North America (next to American Express). When he was 28, he became a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization and later became its president. After organizing the 1984 Games, he was named the 1984 Man of the Year by Time magazine. Now he still circles the globe as commissioner of baseball.

According to his book , Peter relied heavily upon his wife’s counsel throughout the years. In fact, it was Ginny who urged her reticent husband to meet with the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee about heading up the ’84 Games. It was also Ginny who handled family finances and kept home life afloat during the crazy period before the Games.

“The Olympics was the most stressful” time of my life, Ueberroth says. The notoriety and unpredictability of Olympic politics created a strain, described by Peter in his book as a time when “everybody was wired tight. Tempers were starting to flare, and there were reports that some law enforcement officers were getting edgy. Our organization’s seams were strained and starting to split.”

But easing the stress was the glittering stream of famous people, royal treatment in foreign countries, gala balls and world travel. Her life has been an endless series of exciting events, she says, filled with famous people and foreign lands. “This sounds terrible, doesn’t it?” she says after reeling off names of celebrities that she has met.

But throughout the thrills, the family has always come first.

Facing an enormous picture window that frames the ocean, Ueberroth steers the conversation once more toward daughter Vicki, who seems to personify her mother’s commitment to cancer research and prevention. With her honey-blond hair spilling over a baby blue and white striped T-shirt, Vicki has the protein-rich look of a well-scrubbed cheerleader.

Her mother says fate played a part in the events last winter when Vicki found the lump. Her doctor told her it was nothing to worry about, but shortly thereafter she changed doctors for scheduling reasons and her new doctor told her she should have it removed, especially because she was trying to get pregnant. Better to have it removed before she got pregnant than have to worry about it afterward. About four weeks after the lump was removed, Vicki found out she was pregnant.

“I feel that in a way, our mother’s experience was kind of a gift to her daughters,” Vicki says. “It’s because of what happened to her that I was so aware. Her experience has affected our experiences, and even our brother will be more aware with girlfriends or his wife someday.”

Ueberroth says the point of High Priority is to arm women with information--setting their minds at ease while teaching them the keys to prevention. Women’s lives do not need to be ruined when cancer is treated early through breast exams and yearly mammograms.

With new technology, mammograms (a combination of low-dose X-rays and ultrasound scanning) are now able to detect a lump as small as a grain of rice. Removing cancer at that stage is a simple procedure and when detected this early, women have an 80% chance of survival. And yet most women don’t seek mammograms. And even when they do, they are often confused about what to do when a lump is found.

“When Mrs. Reagan had her operation, there was a big story saying . . . she didn’t really need to have that kind of an operation,” Ueberroth recalled. “Well, when you’re reading these things, who do you ask? You can go to 15 different doctors, but you’re still going to be afraid and you’re still going to be confused.

“In the case of Mrs. Reagan, having some doctor who doesn’t know anything about her case saying she didn’t have to go through that, I mean, as a person who went through it myself, what am I supposed to think? If I wanted to, I could dwell on it and say maybe my doctor didn’t know and I didn’t have to go through all that. But you can’t live your life that way. When it comes down to a decision of do I want to live or do I want to fool around and wonder, you take the operation.”

Part of the problem is that people have trouble talking about disease, especially when it involves breasts, according to Pepper Stone, head of the Orange County board of the AMC Cancer Research Center. But over the years, public attitudes have changed to the point that breast self-exams are no longer regarded with skepticism.

“It’s only been 10 years since we can admit to touching ourselves and not have people think it’s strange,” Stone remarked.

Ueberroth says another area of change is the attitude toward reconstruction. Twelve years ago, doctors would not surgically rebuild the breast until five years after mastectomy. Medical professionals were afraid reconstruction would hinder tests to monitor the cancer. Today, reconstruction can occur within a year.

“I never had reconstruction,” she says. “I never bothered. As far as Peter was concerned, it wasn’t an issue, so it certainly wasn’t with me. After five years, I was too busy. We were involved with the Olympics and I couldn’t spare the time.”

Stone says High Priority can be credited with dispelling many misconceptions about breast cancer.

“The original leadership that started High Priority really went up against a lot of negative feelings of ‘this is kind of an uncomfortable subject; maybe it will go away if we just don’t talk about it.’ But they forged ahead and we got the right kind of leadership. There are women who will call and say: ‘Did you do your breast check today? Did you get your mammograms this year?’ And it’s that kind of coaching that sets off the trigger that becomes part of your life style. So it’s not something that has to be so scary. It’s just about being aware.”

Awareness is the watchword of High Priority, which is the information network of the AMC Cancer Research Center, a nonprofit, Denver-based institution created in 1904. High Priority was formed in 1983 by women in the music industry. It provides resources to motivate women to adopt breast cancer preventive measures and has enlisted a slew of celebrities to spread the word.

The entertainers have done more than talk, however. They have donated time, music and artworks to the cause. Last year, MTV and RCA records released a High Priority album, with the back cover devoted to cancer-fighting tips. The front cover illustration was donated by artist Andy Warhol shortly before his death, and Whitney Houston, Cyndi Lauper and Aretha Franklin, among others, donated their music.

Many women who have defeated cancer in the last year have Cher to thank. As national spokeswoman for another High Priority campaign, Cher--in a series of national advertisements--urges women to check their breasts while showering. By the end of 1987, more than 200,000 women had requested the free shower card guide to breast self-examination offered through the album and the national advertisements (financed in part by the Adolph Coors Co.).

Stone, Ueberroth and others in High Priority want breast self-examinations to be as unremarkable a part of hygiene as daily flossing.

“Every time I check my breasts, I go through and feel each little bump and say ‘There’s Harry, Bill, Tim, so I’ll know what I have,’ ” says Stone, who can feel certain lumps because she has naturally fibrous breast tissue. “The beauty of going through this extended kind of exam is to know your own body.”

The women, laughing now, say there is no reason that breast exams can’t be fun. It is the negative connotations, stirred by tasteless advertising and the public’s obsession with sex, that can be damaging.

“One thing I find very irritating is that so much of our advertising is tied to breasts,” Ueberroth says. “You can’t sell a car without a low-cut dress.” By promoting breasts as sexual bait, advertising contributes to women’s despair during breast cancer. If they lose a breast, do they lose their sexuality?

“It’s so damaging to women with low self-esteem,” Ueberroth says. “But with groups like High Priority, these attitudes are starting to change.”