With the aid of a cane, Dr. Lucius Sinks moved briskly through the dining room at the Boar’s Head Inn in Charlottesville, VA. At the time, he was well into his ’80s. But he remained a formidable presence, with thick white hair, dark eyes, and a wry smile.
Last week pediatric oncology lost another pioneer in the field, Lucius Sinks. He was 91.
My first ASCO memories were back almost four decades ago (The Cancer Letter, June 3, 2022).
At 25, Elizabeth Carner was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer.
The ASCO annual meeting began in 1964 as a group of 51 physicians finalizing the bylaws of the organization—and has since turned into a much-anticipated global event that brings together 35,000 to 40,000 people across all areas of oncology.
When Judy Orem learned of her chronic myeloid leukemia diagnosis in 1995, she chose interferon over a treatment that seemed more risky—a bone marrow transplant.
Since its first annual meeting in 1964, the American Society of Clinical Oncology has outgrown most U.S. convention centers—and has fostered the growth and development of generations of oncologists.
We hoped that our city might be “the last place this ever happened.”
Before May 14, 2022, if you mentioned Buffalo, NY, my mind would have taken me back to the city I knew in the 1960s. I grew up there. I was a kid from the ‘hood whose grandmother instilled messages about living a life based on grace and humility from day one. I was a Head Start kid surrounded by people who believed in the power of providing possibility. I was a kid from the poor, Black neighborhood that bordered the poorer, Black neighborhood, but I was rich in the experiences that earned me an acceptance letter to the University of Notre Dame where I got the foundation I needed to go to medical school. It is Buffalo, however, where I got the foundation I needed for life.
Tuesday began a typical day in May in South Texas for me as executive director of the Mays Cancer Center. It was a lovely sunny day for late spring, and at our center we were focused, as we are each day, on the core mission we have had for almost 50 years—to decrease the burden of cancer in San Antonio, South Texas and beyond.