Local News

One in eight women who live until the age of 90 will have had breast cancer at some time in their life. One out of 300 women in their thirties will develop breast cancer.

These types of statistics were part of a recent presentation about breast cancer. Dr. Nazanin Khakpour, assistant member of the comprehensive breast division at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, was the guest speaker at the Shop Talk series sponsored by Ocala Royal Dames for Cancer Research, Inc.

It’s official. The 200 Corridor will get a new 40-acre park, but when it will be open to visitors is unknown.

Pat Gabriel, president of Parks and Recreation Advisory Council (PRAC), said it would be more than a year before the design plans for the property get under way. “It takes awhile,” she said to get a park “online.” The design process has been budgeted for October 2010.

Although those walking the first lap at Friday evening’s Relay for Life at West Port High School wore the same dark purple T-shirt saying they were cancer survivors, each person’s story was different.

It was 1987 when Odin Olson, On Top of the World, first learned he had lymphoma. Chemotherapy was necessary. He has had several relapses in the past but now he is in remission.

Duane Ulery moved to Oak Run two weeks ago. As he walked the first lap, his wife Janet snapped photos of her husband with the plan to send them to back to his doctor in Ohio.

When students from Hammett Bowen Jr. Elementary School joined hands Friday to sing “It’s a Small World,” there was a new awareness in their voices.

They had just concluded a week-long study of 30 of the world’s countries that culminated in the school’s second annual multi-cultural day where they shared, in costume and song, what they had learned.