Cancer Cuts Her Peace Corps Service but Not Her Spirits

Got my latest newsletter the other day from Dorothy Mummert, datelined Wroclaw, Poland; she calls it the Polsku News. I leaned back to enjoy it, the same as I had all her others.

Mummert was once a whiz at styling hair at a Newport Beach shop. Her combination of skill and bubbly repartee helped her build quite a clientele. But she gave up a job she loved to take on one she felt she needed: In 1994, she became a Peace Corps volunteer. She created the newsletter at the request of friends and customers.

Past newsletters have been fascinating accounts of her training and orientation in Poland, and all about the lives of her students--her assignment was to teach English in Wroclaw.

The first page of this issue of Polsku News was typically upbeat Mummert, who was due home in June: “I am returning to you a different Dorothy than the one who left California in 1994, a Dorothy who has grown . . . with a heart glowing with a newfound richness.”

The rest was about Polish art museums and her students. Then came Page Three. The bombshell.

It was obviously written some weeks after the first two pages. Mummert learned she has breast cancer. After initial surgery in Poland, she was sent home quickly for further care, her Peace Corps time cut short by several months.

When I finally reached her, there were no right words to say. Her Peace Corps work was about to propel her into a new teaching career. Now it’s on hold while she endures months of chemotherapy and radiation.

Her first reaction, she says, was how hard it would be on her family, especially her mother. Then everything happened so abruptly. No time for goodbye hugs with all her Peace Corps friends. Mummert had been putting together little presents for her students, ones she never got to deliver. It was after she returned to the Southland that she found out her students had been preparing a surprise farewell party for her. One she never made.

Her prognosis is good, but she’s got a tough road ahead.

Mummert does her best to keep her spirits up. “I’m going to hate losing my hair before Christmas,” she says with a slight chuckle, talking about her chemotherapy. “I’m scared, but I’m ready.”

She’s got a lot of people on two continents pulling for her.

Knowing Early: The Orange County Breast Cancer Partnership last month launched a campaign to increase awareness by offering free mammograms and clinical breast exams. The program is for low-income (no more than $1,672 a month for a household of two) women who are either uninsured or underinsured.

“One big problem is getting seniors to come in for testing,” says program coordinator Jyoti Trueman. Often they have other health problems that seem a higher priority, or they are housebound, or have transportation problems.

The partnership, funded through state health services, has a toll-free number you can call: (800) 298-0800.

Moderator’s Seat: The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda tells its visitors that the Kennedy-Nixon debates have been overrated as a cause of Nixon’s 1960 loss to John F. Kennedy. Not true, says Howard K. Smith, the longtime TV analyst, in his new book released this month: “Events Leading Up to My Death.” Smith was the moderator for the first debate. “Nixon should not have agreed to debate,” Smith states in the book. “He was the famous vice president who had bested Khrushchev in debate in Moscow, had been decorated by heads of state. . . . Kennedy at that time was less well known. In this one encounter, Nixon would elevate Kennedy to his level of prominence.”

But Smith also says it wasn’t much of a debate anyway: “Both candidates shamelessly slid by questions rather than answering them.”

But Smith does acknowledge that his first impression, sitting between them, was that “Nixon was marginally better.” But watching the replay later, Smith says, “it was clear that the handsome, confident Kennedy was victor. He later told me he won the election that night.”

Screaming for Julie: Former U.S. Secret Service agent Ron Williams of Huntington Beach had special reason to celebrate last week when a jury in Los Angeles returned a verdict of death against Andre Stephen Alexander for the 1980 murder of his friend and fellow agent, Julie Cross. She was the only female agent ever killed in the line of duty and Williams was one of the leaders of the investigation into her death.

Says Richard V. Simon, who is collaborating with Williams on a book about the agent’s life: “Every time we worked on Chapter 25 [about the Cross murder], Williams had to stop the interview. He would hyperventilate and scream in frustration and pace wildly, and shed tears.”

But the night of the jury verdict for Alexander, Simon says, “Williams held up a glass of wine, toasted Julie Cross and said, ‘Maybe now we can relax a bit.’ ”

Helping Hand: Dorothy Mummert’s treatment will be at the Cancer Center at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach.

“I’m told it’s the best,” she says.

That’s pretty close. It’s treated more than 2,000 women for breast cancer since opening in 1981, and is continuously named among the Top 100 cancer treatment facilities in the nation by national magazines in the field.

Its statement of goals include: “To provide aggressive treatment with sensitive care.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or sending a fax to (714) 966-7711.