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Community Corner

$1.5M Raised at Cancer Event in Clayton

The benefit for Barnes-Jewish Hospital Foundation's Cancer Frontier Fund featured Tony Award winner Kristin Chenoweth.

On Saturday night, more than 660 people attended Illumination, an event held at in Clayton to benefit Foundation’s Cancer Frontier Fund. The fund provides seed money for innovative research in an effort to fast-track better cancer treatment.

Corporations such as Express Scripts, Clayco, Edward Jones and many others supported the cause. Tony Award winner Kristin Chenoweth performed and talked about her mother, who was diagnosed with several forms of  cancer. Her mother has had breast cancer twice.

 “When my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, I realized this was my moment,” Chenoweth told Good Housekeeping in 2010. “All my life, I’d been on the receiving end of my mother’s endless tenderness and vigilant care. Being allowed to care for her during her recovery was a gift."

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Supporters of the Cancer Frontier Fund raised $1.5 million at the luxury auction held as part of Saturday's event, said Julia Ruvelson, vice president of the foundation. Auction items included a ride with Lance Armstrong, a vacation at a $1 million home, a Napa Valley trip and a visit to a St. Louis Rams practice including a meeting with Sam Bradford.

“It takes a village to raise this kind of money,” Ruvelson said, “and our village is not only finding better treatment at Sitement Cancer Center, but around the country and around the world, because we have world-class investigators, and that’s all they do is try to think about how to cure cancer.”

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The event is in its 12th year, though it has grown from an event that raises $250,000 to an event that raises $1.5 million in the last five years.

 “For the most part, people who come to this event have been touched by cancer, Ruvelson said. “At one point in the evening, George Paz (co-chair with Bob Clark) asked everybody who had been touched by cancer to stand up, and as you can imagine, everybody in the ballroom was standing up. Cancer doesn’t discriminate … ." She said that her own mother died of breast cancer four years ago.

 “You kind of find yourself within a community of people who all kind of understand each other in a new way,” said Abby Hughes, a marketing coordinator with the foundation.

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