October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. In the U.S. alone, 211,300 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, and nearly 40,000 will die. Sadly, they won’t be the only casualties. Consider the families and friends who survive them.

A tradition had been started, friends and townsfolk gathering to fight a just cause. Then in 2003 the cause became about something else, another friend and loved one had been diagnosed with a dreaded and horrible disease, breast cancer.

We all felt the need to help a sister fulfill a promise and find a cure for this disease that has affected everyone in some form or another. It might have been a friend, a sister, a mother, grandmother, aunt, or uncle. Breast Cancer doesn’t care if you are female or male. It just wants to see who has the strength and endurance to pass the test.

Survivor Crop was to benefit for the first time the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. This time there were 120 participants, broken into tribes of 30. Again battles were waged and prizes won. Memories were carefully preserved and colorful pages of artwork were created.

We honored our Breast Cancer survivor Cheryl Lindsay, who with us had cropped the night away, with scrapbooks filled of pre-done layouts. For the first time Cheryl proudly showed what Breast Cancer had caused and took off her wig to show a beautifully shaped skull cleaned of all hair. No one had seen her that way, not even her closest friends. But the strength she received from the crowd that night let her show proudly what the ravages of the disease looked like. There was not a dry eye in the tent that night. We were all so proud of her and it made us all want to fight this disease even harder than before.

We were still small enough in 2003 to remain in the tent, in the parking lot close to Ever After Scrapbooks. When the 24 hours were over, and all of the proceeds were counted we found to our delight that $16,000 had been collected through out that night.

Year Three was enchanted from the beginning until the end, there was some thing special about it, maybe it was the group of women who got together to give of their time and talents, maybe it was luck or a little bit of pixie dust.

This was a year of change and restructure; we reshaped what the event looked like. We went from large groups of 30 to small islands of 12 for our seating. Words like community and friendships were key in the planning. We added a minimum donation to the event, each participant had to collect a minimum of $100.00 in order to attend the event and take home the bounty of goodies the sponsors provided.

Again we honored those who had been diagnosed with Breast Cancer, those who were just diagnosed and those that had survived for 15 years! We had a group of 6 courageous women with us, who had all battled and were surviving the disease. We as a group built an album for the San Diego Affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Taking all of their treasured memories and turning them into works of art,

This year we had loads of fun and exciting things going on, Ellison shared their catalog of dies with us and it made the cropping garden a huge success.
One of the participants who works for Hewllet Packard donated 9 photo printers, paper and ink, to form a HP Photo Technology Center for all to use.

That year we hosted 175 participants at the event and to my wildest expectations never did I imagine that we would raise the amount of funds that we did. My wish was to double what we had raised the year before, $32,000.00 would make me giddy, yet when the total was declared we had raised over $50,000.00 enough to fund two research and education grants.

I have to admit that when it came time to share this bit of news with the group, it was overwhelming. The feeling of a job well done was awesome and strong.

Which brings us to last year, we had 170 participants signed up to face the test of scrapbooking for 24 hours. We’re inside again this year, thanks to Smart and Final. With a lot of help from friends, family and the wonderful staff at Ever After Scrapbooks, we were able to put on a fun and unique scrapbooking event. While at the same time raising money for a cause most worthy. It was harder to come by $40,000 this year, with ladies like Katrina and Rita stirring up so much strife and horror, but we raised what we could and stand proud today to proclaim out loud that we are Survivors one and all ready to take the test yet again. Please come and join us, October 21st and 22nd, I promise you an event unlike any other.

Sheila Goldsberry ~ Survivor Crop Chair


Update:

Six years have gone by and we are getting ready to launch into our 7th year of Survivor Crop. It seems funny that so much time has gone by! We have continued to have successful events and have raised an astounding amount of funds for a very worthy cause! We have reached $233,000.00 in donations over the last 6 years! It makes me proud to be associated with such a wonderful event. Never in a million years did I believe six years ago that Survivor Crop would become such an incredible event.

Sheila Goldsberry