Nancy Owens’ friends describe her as having been beautiful, with mischievous hazel eyes and an infectious laugh.
“She had this grace and presence and just was everyone’s friend,” said Terri Guerra, chairman and president of the Nancy Owens Breast Cancer Foundation. “She never had an unkind word, and she always had a smile on her face.”
Ms. Owens, a pillar of the real estate community in Houston, Texas, survived two bouts of breast cancer over a span of 20 years. Her group of friends, many of them also realtors, remember how Nancy did everything “right”—she ate well, she exercised, she took vitamins and did everything within her power to keep the cancer from coming back.
“She did her regular checkups, everything, and then it came back a third time, and it came back with a vengeance,” said Ms. Guerra. Ms. Owens died on September 7, 2001.
Soon after, a luncheon was planned to honor Ms. Owens and raise money to fight cancer in her memory. It was intended to be a one-time event, but 23 years later, through the establishment of the Foundation, her friends have raised and donated millions of dollars to this cause, with nearly $850,000 given to support breast cancer research at Baylor College of Medicine for over close to two decades.
Xiang ”Shawn” Zhang, Ph.D., director of the Lester & Sue Smith Breast Center at Baylor, studies how to prevent cancer recurrence with support from the Foundation.
“I study how breast cancer moves to other organs such as the bones, lungs and liver—a process we call metastasis,” he said. “This is the most fatal process of breast cancer progression because 90% of breast cancer patients who die, die of metastasis, not the primary tumor.”
Dr. Zhang and his team are thankful for the Foundation’s contribution of $40,000, which helped secure state-of-the-art imaging equipment for their research.
Exciting new things are on the horizon at Baylor, and Dr. Zhang’s team is leading the way.
“I foresee that we will also become leaders in helping to identify the driving course of each patient’s cancer—or so-called precision medicine,” Dr. Zhang said.
“I also predict that in five to 10 years we’ll establish several new lines of basic research and also translational research that will lead to a paradigm shift in practice and patient care.” This will all be possible with the continued support of The Nancy Owens Breast Cancer Foundation.
Ms. Owens’ friends wish she was still at her beloved farm in the country near Round Top, Texas, gazing out at her horses and mules in a field of wildflowers.
“But each time that we meet with the doctors and get an update from the lab, it is so inspiring because they are making progress and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Ms. Guerra said. “And it amazes me. The doctors that are doing this research and the things that they are doing are just miraculous.”
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