The Union News

Town Turns Out For One Of Its Own

February 8, 1998 article in the Springfield Sunday Repulican

By Tom Shea

Jan DiRusso lives in Savoy, about 10 miles north of Cummington.

Two Saturdays ago, she was planning to make the familiar trip into town, but never got out the door.

It wasn't the ice that stopped her. Jan DiRusso has been a hill-towner for 10 years, and ice doesn't stop hill-towners.

But sometimes the effects of chemotherapy do.

She spent the day in bed, dealing with the nausea, too sick to answer the telephone, but not too ill to be cheered by the muffled voices coming from the other room each time the phone rang, telling her of what happened that day in Cummington.

The blood drive there had been planned for weeks under the auspices of the Hampshire Community Action Commission. Almost 50 people had signed up to donate. Anne Marie Rancourt was in charge of the effort that hit close to home for the former emergency room nurse and the friend of Jan DiRusso.

Anne Marie Rancourt was bitten by a brown recluse spider 14 years ago. She had a violent reaction. While in an ambulance being transported to Holyoke Hospital, she had a near-death experience.

She said her spirit went up a dark tunnel into a light where she felt nothing but peace and joy. The experience lasted only minutes. Soon she was in the hospital, begging a doctor not to amputate her left leg.

"I'm a nurse. I stand all day, and I love to dance," she pleaded. The leg was saved, a life altered. "I believe we were put here on earth to help each other," she sid.

Jan DiRusso and Anne Marie Rancourt met at the Cummington Post Office almost five years ago. Jan DiRusso had a variety of jobs there, often filling in at the window. The two 40-something women loved to talk about herbs.

When Jan DiRusso was diagnosed with cancer last fall, word spread quickly through Cummington.

"It's a different culture up here," resident Anne Marie Rancourt says. "It's more personal than the city."

In late November, Jan DiRusso learned she would need a bone marrow tranplant. Her cancer is in Stage 4. As she says, "There is no Stage 5."

At the suggestion of the folks at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, she turned to her friends in Cummington and asked if they could organize a blood drive to help replenish the supply she would need for her operation. This was no problem.

Anne Marie Rancourt had plenty of helping hands and people willing to roll up their sleeves to volunteer a rich vein. All she needed was the weather to cooperate. It didn't.

That Friday, six inches of wet snow fell on Cummington. Sleet followed, into the night. Then came the freezing rain.

By 4:30 a.m., Anne Marie Rancourt was up and phoning to the Red Cross, to the town's Highway Department. Outside, the hilly Cummington roads were slick with ice.

By 5:30, she and the Red Crosser Erica Twiss made the decision that the blood drive would go on as scheduled. The truck with its nurses and supplies arrived at Cummington's town line at 6:45 a.m., and followed a sander that turned the road into the Sahara.

At 8 a.m., when the Cummington Community House opened, there were residents rolling up their sleeves. The line did not end until 2 p.m. Everyone who signed up to donate did.

More than 60 pints of blood were collected that day.

Actually it was a real tribute to Jan DiRusso.

A friend. One of their own.

Even if she lives 10 miles north.


Jan relaxing with her kitty, Milo

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