Cancer Victim Finds Replenishment at Her Pool

Joann Finucan leaves her Anaheim home at 4:30 every weekday morning to jump into her other “home,” the swimming pool at the Anaheim Family YMCA.

Some people might think the pool is her real home because she spends so much time there.

It might as well be. It’s named for her.

“That was a big shock when they said they were going to name the pool for me,” said Finucan, 61, who specializes in getting senior citizens and handicapped youngsters into the pool for exercise.

Her years of service--Finucan has worked at the Y pool since it opened 22 years ago--commitment and love for those who swim there were the reasons YMCA board members voted to name the pool the Joann Finucan Aquatic Center.

“You actually put your life into a swimming pool,” she said. “It’s no 9-to-5 job. You get to be their friend, not just a teacher in the water or as a lifeguard. You get involved into their lives.”

While that motivates the people she instructs, it also works for her.

“That helped me so much when I developed cancer and so many people were pulling for me.” Finucan said that three years ago she was given five months to live after cancer raged through her body. After undergoing chemotherapy, the cancer went into remission.

“Working and thinking positive all helped me,” said the trim mother of six, who sometimes works nights and weekends for other instructors at the pool.

“But you have to do something about what you think,” she continued. “You can’t just sit at home. You have to get off the davenport and do something that is fun every day.”

Finucan said she didn’t pioneer the positive-thought method for wellness.

“There are hundreds of people out there with cancer who are doing the same sort of thing and prolonging their lives,” she said. “I talked with a lady today who had a cancer operation 17 years ago and she’s still there,” she said during a pool-side interview.

While working with the elderly and young handicapped swimmers, “I don’t have time to think of myself.”

Finucan has been involved in swimming since her early days in Ohio, where she grew up spending a lot of time in a cemetery.

“My mom wouldn’t let me cross the busy street where we lived so I used to stay home a lot and my friends couldn’t come to the cemetery to play with me.”

Coming from a family of morticians that began with her great-grandfather, Finucan said she had a strict upbringing.

“My mom only allowed me to go to the Y where I was able to participate in a lot of sports,” she said. “I especially loved swimming and now the days I don’t get into the water I don’t feel nearly as good.”

Finucan earned her physical education degree at the University of Toledo in 1948. She planned to be a teacher before she fell in love and married while attending college.

Within two years she had the first of her six children and stayed home to care for them after teaching one semester.

The next time she taught was in 1968 when she was hired by the Anaheim Y.

One day Maureen Sullivan came to work in Mission Viejo hopping mad after almost rear ending a driver who slowed to make a U-turn.

“I said to myself, ‘Why can’t they put something on cars to show they are making a U turn,’ ” said Sullivan, a registered nurse and Laguna Niguel resident.

So with the help of Elizabeth Himelson, also a registered nurse, the duo patented a U-turn signal device that can be installed in the rear window of cars.

Now they’re trying to get auto makers to buy their idea and make the device standard equipment.

“We have $6,000 invested in it and we think the sky’s the limit,” Sullivan said.

Her husband, Dr. Mark Sullivan, a urologist, made patents a family affair. About the same time, he got a patent for a condom shield to protect sex partners from diseases. His co-inventor is Gilbert Salz “I think our invention might be more marketable,” said Maureen, “but you never know.”