{"id":776,"date":"2017-05-26T09:00:25","date_gmt":"2017-05-26T13:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/?p=776"},"modified":"2017-05-30T15:13:05","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T19:13:05","slug":"776","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/?p=776","title":{"rendered":"Gary Weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Original Man of Teal\u00a0<\/em><\/h1>\n

By Kathryn Walsh | Photography by Mary Grace Johnson<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re ever wandering through the Great New York State Fair or cheering on the Syracuse Crunch, and a silver-haired man approaches you with a handful of teal ribbons, don\u2019t be alarmed.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just Gary Weeks, and he\u2019s come to save your life.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Gary\u2019s mission to spread the word about the symptoms and risks of a disease he said doesn\u2019t get enough public attention. An estimated 22,440 American women will receive a new diagnosis of ovarian cancer in 2017, according to the American Cancer Society. About 14,080 women will die.<\/p>\n

Gary might seem like an unlikely champion of women\u2019s reproductive health, but he has a powerful motivator. He and his wife, Frieda, are carrying on the work their daughter, Heather, never got to finish.<\/p>\n

Heather was a talented dancer and great student. In 2008, after completing a \u201cSesame Street Live\u201d tour and starting a job at the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She was 23 years old.<\/p>\n

Although Heather didn\u2019t have ovarian cancer, her work at the OCRF inspired her to get involved in the fight against the disease. She felt women weren\u2019t getting the information needed to educate themselves about ovarian cancer and weren\u2019t talking to their doctors about it, Gary said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe wanted to make the teal ribbon as recognizable as the pink ribbon,\u201d he explained. \u201cMake sure that all women \u2014 regardless of age, race, financial background \u2014 all women would know about the symptoms of ovarian cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heather wanted to run an informational booth at the state fair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember Frieda saying, \u2018Yeah, yeah, honey, you just get better and we\u2019ll work it out and we\u2019ll have a booth at the fair,\u2019\u201d Gary said. \u201cShe never made it, unfortunately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heather passed away on November 14, 2008, just after her 24th birthday.<\/p>\n

With a small sum of money that remained from a benefit for Heather, Gary and Frieda decided to carry out their daughter\u2019s mission. Hope for Heather was born.<\/p>\n

The next year, Gary used PVC pipes to build a booth. They sold rubber bracelets for $1 apiece and handed out informational materials. The Weekses set up the booth Heather had envisioned.<\/p>\n

Getting people to take a break from state fair merriment to talk about ovarian cancer proved difficult. Approaching them with symptom cards didn\u2019t work, Gary realized. He needed a better way to start the conversation. So he figured out how to make ribbons and enlisted volunteers from his church to make hundreds of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow when we go out, I lead with a ribbon,\u201d he said. \u201cThat diffuses the fear and expectation that a woman\u2019s going to have when a man approaches her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Hope for Heather organizes three major annual events.\u00a0There\u2019s the state fair booth, an annual walk\/run held in Minoa and a fashion show\/brunch event.<\/p>\n

The group has raised $800,000 for research and patient support. Gary and Frieda deliver gift baskets to local women fighting ovarian cancer. They\u2019ve also organized two support groups: Sisters in Strength, open to any woman with cancer, and Positively BRCA, for women who have tested positive for BRCA gene mutations, a diagnosis that dramatically increases a woman\u2019s likelihood of ovarian or breast cancer.<\/p>\n

Other than the BRCA test, there\u2019s no pre-screening test to detect ovarian cancer. The symptoms \u2014 which include bloating, pelvic or abdominal pain and change in appetite \u2014 can be hard to identify as abnormal. That\u2019s why Hope for Heather\u2019s mission is so essential, Gary said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince there is no test for ovarian cancer and the symptoms are so vague, the disease is almost always misdiagnosed,\u201d Gary said, explaining that if symptoms persist for more than two to three weeks, women should insist their medical team prove they don\u2019t have ovarian cancer.<\/p>\n

Gary spends a lot of time thinking and talking about cancer. As of this year, he\u2019s a five-year survivor of bladder cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cFive years is kind of a milestone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He does take time for himself with music and trips to the Finger Lakes, but Hope for Heather and its mission are never far from his mind.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s involved in all elements of the group\u2019s work, from filing taxes to decorating for events to, of course, handing out symptom cards.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven when he used to have his cancer treatments, he was visiting all the doctors\u2019 offices in that building, giving them cards,\u201d Frieda said. \u201cI tried to go one day and they were like, \u2018Where\u2019s Gary?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Gary\u2019s tenacity and dedication to women\u2019s health have inspired other men to get involved in the fight against ovarian cancer. Every September, Hope for Heather tasks 30 male volunteers \u2014 the \u201cMen of Teal\u201d \u2014 with an important job: not to raise money, but to pass out cards and ribbons to women they come in contact with, educating them about ovarian cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe use guys from all walks of life,\u201d Frieda said. \u201cBut Gary is our original Man of Teal.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the fair this year, be on the lookout for a guy in a teal shirt that says \u201cHeather\u2019s Dad.\u201d He might be wearing a sandwich board and carrying symptom cards emblazoned with a picture of his beloved daughter. Rain or shine, he\u2019ll be out there, and he\u2019d love to talk. SWM<\/em><\/p>\n

For more information about Hope for Heather, visit hopeforheather.org<\/a>. The annual Teal Ribbon Run is slated for Saturday, September 23, in Minoa. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Original Man of Teal\u00a0 By Kathryn Walsh | Photography by Mary Grace Johnson\u00a0 If you\u2019re ever wandering through the Great New York State Fair or cheering on the Syracuse Crunch, and a silver-haired man approaches you with a handful of teal ribbons, don\u2019t be alarmed. It\u2019s just Gary Weeks, and he\u2019s come to save…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[260,259,240,160],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-gary-weeks","tag-hope-for-heather","tag-june-2017","tag-mary-grace-johnson"],"gutentor_comment":0,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/untitled-22-Edit-1.jpg?fit=5200%2C3500&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2304,"url":"https:\/\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/?p=2304","url_meta":{"origin":776,"position":0},"title":"SPECIAL FEATURE: A style for every story","author":"Sarah Hall","date":"March 1, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"At the New York State Fair last year, Frieda Weeks was approached by a woman who told her the kind of news she loves to hear. \u201cShe was a woman of the cloth and she said, \u2018I want you to know that two years ago I got a symptom card\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Causes"","block_context":{"text":"Causes","link":"https:\/\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/?cat=104"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Heather-Weeks.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Heather-Weeks.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Heather-Weeks.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Heather-Weeks.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Heather-Weeks.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2567,"url":"https:\/\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/?p=2567","url_meta":{"origin":776,"position":1},"title":"SPECIAL FEATURE: \u2018No woman should die of breast or ovarian cancer:\u2019 CNY\u2019s Hope for Heather reports back following 2019 National Conference","author":"syracusewomanmag_c4lfdt","date":"September 3, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"BY FARAH F. 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