Barbara Ellen Benyak was born on March 31, 1944 to Joe and Julia Benyak in Fayette City, Pennsylvania.  She already had two older teenage brothers Joey and David waiting for her.  They were about 14 or 15 years old by then.  By the time she was a toddler they were getting ready to start their own lives.  I think Joey went into the military and David was married after finishing high school. Mom had a few memories she imparted to me about those two.  She remembered David always lying on the couch, groaning in pain, holding ice on his head after every football game.  In the 1940’s, the helmets were only leather, not the football helmets of today.  I guess football was a lot more brutal back then.  She also told me of a funny story when she was three or four years old.  There was a baby chair that hanged from the ceiling in the living room.  Her nutcase brothers would put her in the chair, bounce her around, twirl the thing, making it wind up so it would spin her around when they let go.  She threw up all over everything.  She used to laugh hysterically telling me that story.  I hope they got into trouble with Grandma.  She kind of had a turbulent relationship with her two brothers over the years. 

     Her father, Joe, was an avid hunter who worked for a steel mill.  He was a little eccentric.  He kept two peacocks that had the run of the yard.  Not your average family pets.  The house was next to a cemetery, so who was going to complain?  She didn’t talk about him much.  He, unfortunately, was an alcoholic, which is where is guess she learned to develop her fighting spirit.  When her father had passed away in August of 1971, she said she did not shed a tear for him one bit.  She seemed to be pretty proud of that fact.  He should’ve been a better father.

     On the other hand, her mother, from what I personally remember of Grandma, was just the sweetest person on the Earth.  I’m glad that she had Grandma to lean on when she was growing up.  She would talk about how Grandma would cover for her when she wanted to do the things that teenagers do.  She really loved her mom.  Her mother, Julia, would do anything for her and was always there for her.

     She graduated from Bellmar High School in May of 1962.  The government needed typist and stenographers, so she and four other girls moved to Washington, D.C. to work for the Interstate Commerce Commission.  Her brother drove her mother Julia, friend Sylvia Package, and herself to Washington, D.C. to start her new life.  Her mother helped her and the other girls find housing.  During some apartment bouncing and roommate changes, as always happens when you are young, she converted to Catholicism which I guess did not go over well with her typically Russian Orthodox family.  She said it was the oldest religion, so why not?  I think she got involved in the Catholic youth groups which is where she met Mary Dean.  She also met my father Ken Dean, Mary’s brother, whom she married just shy of her twenty first birthday on February 20, 1965 in Chillum, Maryland.  She said they were so poor they could not afford a honeymoon.  But, they were a young happy couple.

     They tried so hard to have children, but couldn’t.  Back in 1960’s there were no fertilization clinics like today.  Dad explained the old fertilization techniques to me, and I know it’s awkward, but I just could not stop laughing.  But, that’s what you had to do if you wanted a baby.  Once they realized nothing was working, they were left with only one option – adoption.  That’s where I come in.  Barbara and Kenny opened up their home to a little baby boy who had no place to go.  They adopted me at three weeks old through Catholic Charities in May of 1969. She was twenty five and Dad was almost thirty.  They were so happy.  A lot of their friends were having kids about the same time.

     They lived in apartments in Bethesda and Hyattsville before settling on a house in Wheaton Maryland.  We were not there for long since the marriage was starting to falter.  I remember switching between Mom’s or Dad’s lap at the marriage counselor.  After seven years of marriage, she divorced dad in 1972 by going to the Dominican Republic to have the marriage annulled.  I remember watching my Dad load up the U-haul trailer with my toybox and little red tricycle as Mom stood in the grass, and I knew something was not right.  It was a bright sunny September day, but a sad day.   The funniest thing is that the U-haul trailer attached by a hitch to that crappy little brown 1971 Ford Pinto seemed bigger than the car itself.   I don’t know how she made the four hour journey back to Fayette City with it.  Dad tried to get her back and came to visit.  He slept on the pullout couch in the living room, but Mom knew it was over.

     When we lived at her childhood home with Grandma and Joey who was divorced by then, Mom would sit on the floor and play toys and games with me.  I had Lincoln logs and Tinker Toys, and we would build things together.  Then she got the hair-brained idea to glue the Lincoln Logs together after we had built a log cabin and she put it on the fireplace mantle.  I, of course, wanted to play with them again, so I took it off the mantle and pulled them apart.  I was picking glue out those Lincoln Logs for weeks.  She would always get me those paddle ball things.  Once I sufficiently irritated her enough with it, she would rip the ball and gumband off the paddle.  Then, she placed the paddle on top of the refrigerator to use later as a paddle to spank me when I was bad.  Yes, spankings.  I would climb up to see how many were up there –one, two, three, four, five.  Why did she always bring those things home?  She knew within an hour I would have tried her patience.

     She dropped the ugly Pinto for a white 1972 Mach 1 Mustang.  I was very proud of that choice of automobile.  I was only three, but when she came home in that car, I thought she was the coolest mom ever.  I could not wait to drive it when I was older.  So there she was, a pretty twenty eight year old woman with a hot car.

     She dated for a few years and met Warren Longenecker.  They were married in the summer, August 4th 1975.  He had three children Dawn, Paul and Daryl by his first wife Sharon.  They lived with her.  So, it was just the three of us in a mobile home.  Her mother, Julia, at 66 years old, had a stroke a couple of months after the marriage that took her right side (I think, because she had to learn to write again.  I remember her practicing at the kitchen table.)  I remember Mom always worrying about her mom.  She would take me to the nursing home to visit Grandma, Harmersville, I think, where she was learning rehabilitation.  Her mom soon lost her leg due to diabetes and was confined to a wheelchair.  Warren helped to build a handicap bathroom on the first floor in the covered front porch where Grandma and I used sit together.  Grandma needed a lot of help, and Mom made sure there was a home nurse there to care for her.  Mom would always visit her and take me with her.

     Her brother Joey lived there as well, so Mom expected some level of care.  Well……….Mom went over one time to find her mother lying in the bed with all of the drapes closed, so no sunlight was coming in.  It was dark all day long.  Mom spit fire.  The next time, she went over to find Joey eating a steak while grandma was eating a TV dinner.  She spit nails.  Mom was furious to say the least.  About this time, Dawn, Paul and Daryl moved in with us. We built a home in Belle Vernon and moved in on December 23, 1978 just before Christmas.  Dawn had eloped to Germany with her new husband and had already had her first child by then. Mom wanted her mother to move in with us so she could look after her.  So, Warren finished off the downstairs bedroom for Paul.  Now we could bring Grandma to our house.  A much better situation.  Her mother’s health deteriorated over the year and a half she lived with us until she finally had a stroke again in late September 1980.  Three weeks later in mid-October she passed on.  Mom was 36, Grandma Julia was 70.

     After her mother died, Mom decided to give back by joining a volunteer ambulance service in Rostraver.  She became an E.M.T.  I remember her studying constantly for it.  She said since they were always there for her mother when she called.  Now it was time to give back.  She said it was the least she could do.  I was proud of her.

     Mom was always high energy.  She was always doing something.  Painting, knitting afghans and blankets, ceramics, always reading.  She was always rearranging furniture.  Every few months the couch was in a different place.  Heaven help you if it was dark and she didn’t tell you she moved it.  My favorite times were when she would jump up from the couch without warning, reach into her wallet, pull out a dollar and say “Go to the store and get me a candy bar.”  She had a sweet tooth.  She would let me have the rest.  At that time candy bars were 25 cents, so I would get three for me and one for her.  It was always a Milky Way. 

     One by one, all of us kids moved away to start our own lives.  She and Warren moved to Sebring, Florida in 1989.   She said she went on “vacation” and never came back.  Later, she found out she had breast cancer in November 1992 at the age of 48.  She had a double mastectomy.  When you lose a body part there is a grieving process.  I did not understand that at the age of twenty three.  She fought the cancer and won!!    I am so glad I did not lose her then and had another twenty years with her.  She met Betty Canfield who would drive her to her appointments and they became good friends.  I am so glad that happened, because I just did not know what to do for her so far away in Maryland.

     She divorced Warren in September, 1994.  She felt like she had lost her whole family.  I was all that was left.  It was very tough for her.  She moved to Tampa about this time and went back to college to become a CPA.  She graduated in 1997 and then again in 2000.  I found a mid-term paper she had written about China and economics.  I was impressed.  She was a smart woman.

     She decided to fight cancer in a different way.  First, she had reconstructive surgery – new boobs!!  Back atcha cancer!!  She was damn proud of them, too.  She felt like a complete woman again.  Second, she wanted to help other women in her shoes make good decisions, so she did counseling for a while to help other women with breast cancer.  She was interviewed by a couple of newspapers, the articles of which are posted on this site.  It will tell you a lot about her.  She wanted her story out there to help others.  I am very proud of her for that, having that kind of courage.  Most people keep it secret, keep it to themselves.  She went the opposite way.  Always a fighter.  Always a rebel.

     When she moved to Tampa, after a few years of renting, she bought an apartment on the second floor of the building with a large balcony overlooking a water feature, a walkway, and had a direct line of site to the pool.  I knew she did this so she could talk and chit-chat with anyone walking by.  She would strike up a conversation with anyone, I mean anyone.  Sometimes, I used to get so embarrassed.  Mom used to sit out there all the time on the balcony and enjoy the evenings with the cats doing her crossword puzzles or Sudoku.  I think she really enjoyed the last ten years of her life there.

     After she lost her job in 2009 because of the downturn in the economy, Mom had a tough time financially.  I remember how times got tough in the late seventies and early eighties in Belle Vernon when everyone was out of work.  All the steel mills were closing.  One time, we were at the checkout in Kmart, and she did not have enough money to pay.   Those were the days when the cashier would yell at the top of her lungs “I have a VOID!!!!!!”  so the entire store could hear.  Very embarrassing.  I know how she felt because it happened to me as a kid.  She used food stamps.  The electric company was always threatening to cut off the power.  Bill collectors calling.  I think those days taught her how to stretch a dollar, so in her later life she could make it work.  She was the coupon queen and could find anything for free.  Free stuff.  She was good at that, but it did not necessarily curb her spending habits. I remember Dad going on and on about a 900 dollar coat that Mom had made for herself which was a boatload of money back in 1970.  Her second husband Warren would get so furious because the checks would bounce.  They had a joint checking account.  Big mistake.  He would get so furious, pull the desk drawer out, dump it on the living room floor and pitch a fit, rightfully so I admit.  This, of course, had no effect on mom.  This happened on a regular basis.  She was going to spend what she was going to spend and that’s that.  I look back and just laugh.  She had a knack for finding and spending money.  But, she was a meticulous keeper of the books.

     Dad used to tell the story of how Mom would stretch a meal.  When Mom would make spaghetti on Sunday, he knew he was getting spaghetti on Monday; refried spaghetti on Tuesday; refried, refried spaghetti on Wednesday; and chili on Thursday and then refried chili on Friday.  That marinara sauce got a lot of mileage.  I guess Saturday she gave him roast beef.  Dad would want it rare and nearly mooing on the plate with the cowbell still attached, but Mom would cook it beyond well done because that’s what her mother did.  Dad would say “How long has it been in the oven?”  Mom would say “Three hours.”  Poor Dad, he would just cry inside.  Usually she was a good cook.   She taught us kids how to cook early on.

     Mom was always clipping out things, highlighting them, and sending me things in the mail.  She would call me and say “I sent you something in the mail.”  It would be a clipping of a car, a beautiful home, interior, vacation or story she found interesting and thought I might like.  I would turn over the clipping and on the back was some woman claiming to have been abducted by aliens and is now pregnant with its child or the latest Sasquatch sighting in Beverly Hills, so I knew she was getting it from some tabloid like the Enquirer.  Sometimes I had trouble figuring out which side of the paper clipping I was supposed to read, since they both had stories on them.  Thank god she would highlight one side with a highlighter so I knew.  She loved those tabloids.  She was forever reading them.  When I was a teenager, she would be sitting on the couch reading them, jump up, shove the tabloid into my hands as I was sitting on the floor watching TV, and say “Here.  Oh my god!  You have to read this.  Look at what Jeane Dixon is predicting.  Well.  Go on.  Read it.  Tell me what you think.”  I would just crack up.  I usually had no idea what to say.  I’m going to miss those highlighted clippings.

     In the end, the cancer came back in 2011 but she beat it.  She came up to see me in Washington, D.C. in October of 2011.  She looked great.  But then in 2012 it came back and had spread to her bladder from her breastbone.  It got into a few other places too.  I would talk with her on the phone and she sounded okay.  She was good at covering her pain.  I could never get a straight answer out of her about her health.  I think she just did not want to worry me or to see her in a bad way.  She was getting chemo and radiation.  It was all just too much for her.  She got pneumonia and her kidneys were failing in early February.  That landed her in the hospital on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, 2013.  I flew down to see her.  She did improve for the week that I was there.  I helped her pay her bills and cleaned her home.  I put her in a nursing home/hospital for rehabilitation.  My plan was to come back in three weeks and move her to another nursing home to recuperate or take her home.  She seemed to be doing well.  However, while I was back home, they could not do dialysis anymore.   She never came out and died three weeks later on March 16th, 2013.  Her body just gave out.  She was always energetic, upbeat and optimistic throughout her life, but this one just got her.

     When I was giving her clothing to Goodwill, her neighbor Evelyn remarked to me that Mom had a peculiar habit.  She always cut the tags off of her clothing.  She hated the feel of a tag on her neck.  I had completely forgotten.  I can’t tell you how many times as a little boy, I put my shirts on backwards (especially in the dark mornings getting ready for school) because I couldn’t find the stupid tag.  I cussed her out under my breath every time too.  I laugh about it now.  It is always the little things you remember.  All those clothes at Goodwill, and they have no idea what size any of them are.

     I used to call her almost every Sunday about 6:00pm.  Now I can’t.  I’ll miss her always saying “I sent you something in the mail.”  All is quiet now.

She was a fighter.  She is at peace.

A News-Sun Article by Lesa Morey

Cancer Victim on a Mission of Support

      A little more than two years ago, 50-year-old Barbara Benyak found herself thrown into a two-week nightmare she remembers through clouds of shock and fear.  In mid-November 1992, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Consultations with surgeons confirmed the worst. Benyak would  have to undergo six months of chemotheraphy — after enduring a double mastectomy.

     It was the same day she got that  double-wharnmy that she saw a  plastic surgeon. Breast reconstruction, or implants she was told at the time, was possible, but a dazed  Benyak couldn't fathom yet another  series of operations.  She focused her decisions on those related to staying alive. "I dreaded  another series of operations," as  well as another week of hospital recovery. Breast reconstruction, she decided, would have to wait.

     There were plenty of doctors to talk to and piles of literature to read.  But she had little time — and  simply no opportunity — to sit down with another woman who had faced what she was about to face.  "I had no basis for making a decision about whether or not to have breast reconstruction," she said.

     In the months ahead, Benyak, a divorced Sebring bookkeeper,  endured many things — including  what she only described as "miracles." The surgery and chemotherapy proved successful. However, along with her breasts,   Benyak had lost much of her confidence and self-esteem.  "I wondered how I could cope with the loss of parts of my body so closely linked with my femininity,"  she said.  Benyak came to regret her decision to forego plastic surgery.

     Though motherhood was behind her, she didn't feel like a whole woman.   A year and a half later, Benyak decided she wanted to go back for reconstructive surgery.   She soon learned it wouldn't be easy. Doctors told her she wasn't an appropriate candidate for reconstruction since previous abdominal surgery prevented use of nearby stomach muscles for support. A series of procedures would need to be necessary to prepare her for new breasts.  In July last year, "tissue expanders" were inserted; in three subsequent visits, she was gradually "inflated" during a three-month period to expand the tissue and skin.

      The procedure was painful — almost as painful as the comments she got from people who suggested she was too old, too vain for such "cosmetic' surgery.  Last November, the implants were completed.  "I feel like a new person," she said. "I have regained my self-assurance and, once again, I am complete.  I have no prosthesis, and I  am able to wear low-cut dresses or bathing suits with no embarrassment."

     Benyak openly talks about her experience because she believes other women who find themselves in  her shoes don't have to make the same bad decision she did.  Had she been given the chance to meet another woman who had undergone  reconstruction, she could have avoided the need for the two extra operations, the painful tissue expansion procedures, the time off from work and the regret.   "If only I could have learned what was involved in order to reach an informed decision," she said.  "Receiving explanations from doctors is not the same as talking with another patient.

     That's why Benyak got involved in the Highlands County Breast Cancer Support Group, which meets on the third Monday of every month at Highlands Regional Medical Center.  "How well I understand that when you are diagnosed, you need all the support, compassion and information you can get from women who know from personal experience  what you are going through.

     "You may or may not decide to have breast reconstruction," she said, "but you need not make this decision alone."

A Tampa Tribune article by Judy Hill

Mastectomy Survivor Favors Show and Tell

     Barbara Benyak, a Sebring bookkeeper,  got the devastating news Nov. 17, 1992.

Breast cancer.
Both breasts.

      To say that the Pennsylvania native was  shocked is vastly understating her reaction  to the diagnosis.  A double mastectomy was scheduled  two weeks later.  During the preoperative days, Benyak  faced a whirlwind of doctors, tests, terror.  She was provided with a mind-boggling array of information about the surgery and  the chemotherapy that would follow.  She also received information about  breast reconstruction.
      But the impact of the  diagnosis — the shock, disbelief and confusion — contributed to a decision Benyak came to regret    Thankfully, it wasn't a decision that affected her prognosis or recovery. What it did affect, however, was her self- confidence and self-esteem.  Benyak opted not to get reconstructive surgery. So she went home after her mastectomies in December 1992 to face life without breasts.  "I was grateful that my surgery had been successful," she says. "But I wondered how I could cope with the loss of parts of my body so closely linked with my femininity. Motherhood was behind me, but I wondered if I would again feel like a whole woman."

Missed Opportunity

     Barbara Benyak's decision not to get breast reconstruction was based, in part, on not having met anyone who had had the procedure.  "I didn't have the opportunity to see another woman witn reconstructed breasts, to touch them, feel them. ... If I'd had that opportunity, I could have made an objective decision.  Explanations from doctors is not the same as talking with another patient."
     About 18 months after her mastectomies, Benyak, then nearing 50 and divorced, decided on reconstructive implants.  At that point, the procedure required two surgeries and more time off from her job.  The discomfort during three months of  tissue expanding for implants to be inserted  was almost the least of it, she says. What hurt nearly as much were the cruel comments and criticism she got from people who weren't sympathetic to her desire for breasts.
      She was too old to worry about breasts, some told her. Others said that wanting  breasts was pure vanity and that reconstructive surgery was merely cosmetic.  "It's not cosmetic," she says. "Losing a breast is the same as losing an arm or a leg."
      In November 1994, nearly two years after her mastectomies, the implants were complete. Benyak was thrilled.  "I felt like a new person," she says. "I flaunted them, I was so excited that if anybody wanted to look, I'd show them."

Reason for Regret

      Benyak's regret is that she didn't have  the procedure done when she had her mastectomies.  "I created another two operations that  were unnecessary. It would have all been done and I would have walked out of the hospital the same way I walked in and wouldn't have had the trauma of looking in the mirror every day and seeing no  breasts."
     No matter what their decisions are about a host of issues, says Benyak, breast cancer patients should push for as much information as they can before surgery and talk to women who have experienced what they are going through — women who have faced the same news, the same terrors, the same choices.
      She feels so strongly about it that she has become a peer counselor. Saturday, she was among 50 or so people, including 30 or so cancer survivors, attending a meeting of Factors — Fighting Cancer Together — a breast cancer support group that meets monthly at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center.  Some of the women at the meeting are more than 10 years into recovery. Most are like Benyak, still just a year or two past surgery.  One woman only recently had received the diagnosis of breast cancer and had not yet had surgery or made a decision about breast reconstruction.
     After the regular meeting, Benyak sought her out.
     Within minutes, she knew what Benyak didn't know December 1st, 1992.

      "I took her in the bathroom."