EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is the seventh in a series of stories on cancer survivors, caregivers and those who have succumbed to various forms of cancer. The Manning Times is posting these stories weekly through Clarendon County Relay for Life, which will be held 6 p.m. to midnight May 6 at Manning High School's Ramsey Stadium.
Annie Robinson was unaware that her sister, Joanne Charles, had ovarian cancer until the latter was in Stage 3 with the illness.
“When I found out, I assumed that she had been trying to deal with it by herself,” said Robinson, who noted her sister was diagnosed in 2012. “She told me she was in Stage 3 last year. It was April when she got really sick.”
Charles succumbed to the illness in July 2015, just two months after attending Clarendon County Relay for Life.
“I think that was really good for her,” said Robinson. “I think she got to interact with a lot of survivors and people who had been through what she’d been through.”
It was also a good experience for Robinson and her other sister, Betty Robinson, and Charles’ daughters, Atiya Charles and Tamiko Fletcher.
“We got to talk with others who had been caregivers and who had family members with cancer,” Annie Robinson said. “We will definitely be back next year. It was a good experience for us.”
About a month before Relay for Life – which will be held 6 p.m. to midnight May 6 at Manning High School’s Ramsey Stadium – Robinson and her family will hold their own remembrance for their fallen sibling.
Registration for I Walk for Joanne – The Joanne W. Charles Memorial Fund 2016 Ovarian Cancer Awareness Walk – will begin 7 a.m. April 2, with the walk starting at 8 a.m.
“After she passed, in the beginning I was going to go back to Maryland,” Robinson said. “Each night, I would go to sleep and I would have a dream telling me I had to do something. I just couldn’t let it go. I realized that a lot of money is needed for research.”
One night, Robinson said she “got up, called her nieces – Charles’ daughters – and told I just had to do something.”
“I wanted their blessing, even though she was my sister,” Robinson said. “I asked them if it would be all right to start a walk in memory of my sister.”
She then talked with Summerton Mayor Mac Bagnal, who she said “thought it was a great idea.”
She said the event will start and end at the Clarendon School District 1 Community Resource Center – the old Scott’s Branch High school – at 1154 Fourth St. in Summerton.
She said donations made toward the walk will go toward the South Carolina Oncology Associates Cares Foundation.
Robinson said that her sister called her nearly a year ago when she was diagnosed as Stage 4.
“The treatment wasn’t really working,” said Robinson, who lived in Maryland at the time. “My sister, Betty Robinson, had done a lot of traveling with her back and forth for treatment. Her two daughters, they work and couldn’t go back and forth. So my other sister was with her and could take her back and forth.”
She said Charles’ friends also helped out, including Daisy Lawson and Azalee Williams.
“We had lots of help and are so grateful to the community,” said Robinson.
She said that the family has deep roots in Summerton.
“We were all born in Summerton,” said Robinson.
She said cancer has stricken others in their family.
“My father, he had prostate cancer; I have a brother, a firefighter in Maryland, who was stricken with prostate cancer,” she said. “My father’s brother’s oldest son, he has prostate cancer. I know of three cousins who have died from cancer.”
“It’s an awful thing, and you pray that someone you love doesn’t get it,” Robinson said.
She said she thinks about her oldest sister – who was 69 when she died – all the tiem.
“It still hurts; I sit around and think about her and what she’d be doing if she were still here,” Robinson said. “I came home at least twice a year when I lived in Maryland, and we went different places together. Now, I don’t have my oldest sister. So, it’s hard without her.”
For more information on the Memorial Walk and Run, email Joanne.Memorial.10k@gmail.com, or call (803) 566-0662.
