NOW Activist’s Friends Have a New Cause: Helping Her

Not long ago, Georgia Fetchen Reed of Orange could have looked toward 1997 as a great year. Her husband would be retiring, her own career would be in full swing and she would be completing 25 years as an activist in women’s causes.

But her life headed in a different, unexpected direction: Financial setbacks, divorce, cancer and bills. Huge bills. Nobody expects to have an extra $4,000 per month tacked onto regular living expenses. But that’s what her chemotherapy and doctors have cost.

I called Fetchen Reed, however, not to talk about her troubles, but about the good things in her life. What Fetchen Reed has going for her, on the other side of the ledger, is friends. Lots of them.

The South Orange County Chapter of the National Organization for Women, a group in which Fetchen Reed has been a pioneer, will have a fund-raiser to help defray her medical expenses. It’s set for July 26 at the Casablanca Bistro in Newport Beach.

She hadn’t expected it, and says she’s still overwhelmed: “It’s sort of like drowning and all of a sudden here’s someone offering you a life raft.”

Fetchen Reed, 52, worked in aerospace and her husband in real estate when both industries were hit hard by the recession of the early 1990s. It set them back financially, and Fetchen Reed had to switch careers. She was doing well in computer programming when she learned last year that she had uterine cancer. It turns out, she says now, that the cancer was, in a strange way, one of the best things to ever happen to her. In treating her, doctors discovered that she had much more serious ovarian cancer.

“Ovarian cancer is something that is so often undetected,” she said. “I might not have known for another two years, when it was too late.”

Because she works by private contract, Fetchen Reed has no company medical insurance. She couldn’t buy her own medical insurance because she has high blood pressure. She was covered by Medi-Cal for the first six months of her chemotherapy, which was completed in April. But when her son Justin, who has attention deficit disorder, turned 21, she was dropped from that insurance program and had no coverage at all for the final three months. She was no longer covered by her ex-husband either. That’s why her NOW friends are coming to her aid.

Her medical prognosis is good, and Fetchen Reed’s outlook is bright.

“So many people have been so wonderful, like the staff at St. Joseph Hospital, my friends,” she said. “And my son, he’s been a great help to me. I wanted so much to be able to handle all this so I can be a good role model to him.”

Now Fetchen Reed has a new cause: Medical insurance for women who are in the same category as she: not indigent, not senior citizens, without company insurance and uninsurable.

“It’s more important than ever that women be active in causes,” she said. “I’ve had to set aside those activities for a while. But I’m going to be back.”

How in the World? It was billed as “A Taste of the World,” a huge food fair at Anaheim Stadium. As many as 60,000 were expected last weekend. But it turned out to be a little less than worldly.

The entry price was $8 per adult (plus $6 parking) and the food cost more. When we arrived on Saturday, the tiny carnival that came with the fair was on hold because stadium officials were awaiting proper insurance papers. When the papers arrived, they were deemed inadequate, we were told. So the carnival packed up and left while we watched. (My wife found the rides overpriced anyway.)

Attendance was deadly sparse. The rock bands joked about playing to empty chairs. The food choices were far too limited, and portions were small. (Would you want to pay $8 for the chance to buy a $2 soda?)

I went back on my own on Sunday to see if it got any better. I was told the entry fee was being cut from $8 to $6. The fair was shutting down four hours early (mercifully) because two rock bands called and said their bus had broken down. Many of the vendors were angry that it was poorly promoted. One vendor told me she hadn’t had a single customer since her shift started an hour earlier.

Said another: “You could almost go to Disneyland for what they charged people to come here. No wonder nobody showed.”

To be fair, production company officials I talked to on the scene thought everything was going great. The same company will put on “Taste of the Beach Right on the Sand” in Huntington Beach in September. Maybe it can work out some of its flaws by then.

Friendly Suggestion Department: Several people I talked to at the food fair mistakenly believed it would be inside the stadium. Instead, it was set up out in the parking lot. When stadium officials lease out space for these events, they might require the producers to make that clear in their brochures and promotional material. This one could have used the ambience of being on the ball field.

The Charles Chair? Count me among those dismayed that a UC Irvine professor slipped O.J. Simpson into his classroom without anyone knowing, including university officials.

Yes, I support free speech. But having Simpson speak to a criminology class is like asking Charles Keating to lecture students about investment banking.

University officials made clear they were not endorsing Simpson. But they did endorse having William Thompson, who was part of Simpson’s defense team because of his DNA expertise, teach a 10-week course called “Seminar on the O.J. Simpson Case.” Maybe some won’t agree that objectivity is necessary in such a course. But I question its value, especially after one of its students was quoted talking about the “thrill” of having Simpson appear because he is a “historical figure.”

Wrap-Up: Tickets for the dinner ($35) or donations to the Georgia Fetchen Reed Chemotherapy Fund can be mailed to South Orange County NOW at P.O. Box 307, Laguna Beach, CA 92652.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com