Brian Williams on Beating Breast Cancer

It was one of the hottest days of the year and NBC Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams came home to fight for a cause — freezing out breast cancer and its past treatment ills.

The Middletown native, for the sake of the fight, his sister who succumbed to the disease in 2006, and the sense of community in which he was raised, donned a suit, purple tie, post-prom boutonniere (explanation to come) and a portable fan to attend the Power of Pink luncheon on Sandy Hook on Thursday.

The annual event, which featured Williams as its guest speaker and Dr. Debra Camal as its honoree, was sponsored by the Women’s Council for the Leon Hess Cancer Center at Monmouth Medical Center, Long Branch. It was designed to not only raise funds for the cause, but to inspire and educate.

That’s where Williams came in. A self-proclaimed diehard “townie,” as he described himself to Patch in a pre-speech chat, the newsman is a firm believer that there’s nothing like community spirit to squelch the bad and sustain a solid fight for the good.

It’s how he was raised. And he was raised in Middletown. So was his sister, who rooted her adult life in Middletown and became a mother of five there, but lost her good six-year cancer fight.  Still, Williams said, she “had a great quality of life thanks to a whole lot of people in Middletown and Monmouth County …  We have the towns, the beaches, that rooted sense of community and all the great memories. All of these things are what bring us back …”

Keeping a vise grip on his dime store plastic personal fan and poking fun at the flower on his lapel, saying he hadn’t worn one since the 1977 Mater Dei Senior Prom, Williams mused about Middletown.

Those hometown ties like his own, he reminded the audience, are also the ones that many revisit to draw strength, character and comfort in a crisis … such as breast cancer.

“All of my life’s memories surround me within a 10 mile radius of this,” he said, gesturing to all of Sandy Hook, which is also in Middletown. “I was a kid at Middletown Village School when we went on a nature trip to Sandy Hook. Mrs. Delfino sat in the front of the bus … When we got here, we were greeted by a guide who proceeded to scare us to death with stories about the missiles (at Fort Hancock, the old Cold War Nike missile site). Yeah, go ahead a tell a kid all about the power in a missile that could decimate him and his entire world  …

“Never mind that, though. All the way back home we giggled that there was actually a place called Spermaceti Cove. I’m still giggling over that.”

Since that inaugural Sandy Hook bus bonanza on life lessons, Williams grew up. He got his first job as a delivery boy for the now defunct Courier newspaper, went to his late 1970s senior prom at Bucky Smith’s (the well-known local institution of a tacky townie banquet hall in North Middletown), graduated from Mater Dei High School, drank his last shot of tequila on Murray Beach in Keansburg, hunted down Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemmons at all the bars underage, got a self-boasted 18 credits from Brookdale Community College and became a volunteer fireman for Middletown’s Old Village Company.

That was a prideful volunteer moment for Williams in his lifetime.            

So was the brief stint in his young adult life when he volunteered for Middletown’s Fairview First Aid. It was during that time when he made his first connection, albeit routine, with Monmouth Medical.

“My first memory of Monmouth was driving up in an ambulance to bring a patient in,” he said. “So, when Joe Romanowski (Monmouth Medical Foundation advisor and Gold Tinker jewelry store owner) called to ask me to speak at this event, I had to come. Besides, when Joe calls, you go shopping at Gold Tinker — locations in Rumson and Deal — and you show up.”

With that, Williams got ready to hand the mic over to the day’s honoree, Dr. Camal. But, he couldn’t resist doing so without a couple of quips to set the stage.

“I know you’d like for us to keep the speeches brief in this heat today, so if any speaker is going long, you should know that it’s because of the breeze up here,” he joked. “Oh, and remind me to take this flower off before I go on the air tonight.”

Enter Dr. Debra Camal …

Debra Camal, MD, FACS, is the Monmouth Medical breast surgeon who oversees the Jacquiline M. Wilentz Breast Center, which boasts a unique concentration on comprehensive breast cancer care.  Combining the support and clinical components of care, Camal said, make all the difference in treatment.

The idea, she added, is to offer more personalized care in the long term and end up with more effective diagnosis, treatment, preventative care, and survivorship.

“In the old days, when breast cancer was diagnosed in patients, questions were discouraged and even the diagnosis of cancer was not talked about much,” she said. “Doctors now meet to discuss the treatment of individual patients … there have been so many improvements in treatment … MRIs have been streamlined (to find even the smallest lumps) … there are smaller incisions in surgery, better reconstructive results, genetic screening is allowing  early detection … there are more effective diagnoses and treatments, regardless of ability to pay.”

The concentration on better doctor-patient relationships, with doctors paying more close attention nowadays to body language as a medical barometer is also an area in which great strides have been made, she said.

And her patients can attest to at least Dr. Camal’s effectiveness. Dr. Catherine Hanlon, director of Monmouth Medical’s Emergency Services is a breast cancer survivor on whom Camal operated. “She’s terrific,” Hanlon said before the speech.  “She operated on me and not only did a great job with the surgery; but, more importantly, gave me ultimate support, trust and care. That passion she has for her work is unmistakable and what makes her so great.”

Camal, like Williams, looks to and draws on her upbringing as she strives for the best she can do every day.

“To my mom … Thank you for believing that I could achieve any goal if I simply worked hard enough,” she said. “To my kids … I hope that you find love and passion in your personal and professional lives, as I have.”