For more than 25 years October has been Breast Cancer Awareness month. Each year Allen Countians show their support for victims by wearing pink or using pink in window displays.
This year is no different. Local businesses are putting in large orders for merchandise, with the proceeds going to research.
According to website www.breastcancer.org, one in eight women will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of their lifetime. Also, about 15 percent of women who suffer breast cancer have a family member diagnosed with it.
Women are not the only ones diagnosed with the disease. About 2,140 new cases of invasive breast cancer were discovered in men in 2011.
On the brighter side, statistics don’t portend doom and gloom, in 2011 there were more than 2.6 million breast cancer survivors in the nation.
TO GENERATE awareness Bella Donna Salon has a contest where people decorate and hang a bra on a tree limb outside the salon.
Entry fee is $5. The bras will be there until the end of October. A winner will be announced on Nov. 1, with the prize a $20 gift certificate to be used at the salon.
This is Bella Donna’s first year with a bra-tree contest, but it has participated in fundraising for five years.
“We do feather hair extensions, sell T-shirts and pink bracelets, give glitter tattoos, sell raffle tickets and other various merchandise. The proceeds go to the Kappa Alpha Sorority,” salon owner Joelle Shallah said.
She said Kappa Alpha helps women with immediate effects of breast cancer.
FOR THE past couple of years the Shirt Shop has decorated its window display in everything pink.
This year, the shop has taken on three major orders for pink shirts or shirts with pink ribbons.
They are shirts for the Iola softball youth league, Friends for Life in Yates Center and the Marmaton Valley High School (Moran) volleyball team.
“We do this to generate awareness for breast cancer and in honor of the victims,” shop owner Elizabeth Donnelly said. “It also reminds you how important it is to get those annual screenings.”
Other stores are showing their support as well, such as Iola Office Supplies, which has a variety of pink supplies from paper clips to scissors.
