Part One: A Rally Begins
In 1991, a television broadcast watched from a hospital bed helped spark a movement in Virginia.
Patti Goodall, a 38-year-old mother of two young children, had been admitted to the hospital after complications from her first chemotherapy treatment. Trying to pass the time, she flipped through television channels and stopped on the Today Show.
A segment about breast cancer caught her attention. Elenor Pred, co-founder of Breast Cancer Action, was being interviewed.
Pred had first been diagnosed with breast cancer in 1981. When her cancer returned in 1988, she was outraged that nearly a decade had passed with so little progress in treatment. She was equally alarmed by the growing number of young women being diagnosed—and dying—from the disease.
Pred was organizing a protest rally for Mother’s Day in San Francisco.
Patti Goodall & Family, 1991. Photo by Arthur Stephens Photography.
When Patti returned home from the hospital, she did something bold. She called information, tracked down Pred’s phone number, and reached out.
Around the same time, Patti was preparing to attend a breast cancer support group meeting. She had been hesitant to join. She imagined it would be a “touchy-feely” experience that didn’t really suit her. But another young mother in treatment, Sherry Kohlenberg, encouraged her to go.
What Patti discovered surprised her.
“It was not a bunch of women sitting around whining,” Goodall later recalled. “They were very knowledgeable. They were reading scientific journal articles. They were talking about their ability to have children after breast cancer. They were discussing genetics. I thought, ‘Wow—these women are on top of things.’”
At the next meeting, Patti shared an idea.
Inspired by what she had seen on television, she proposed organizing a Mother’s Day rally in Virginia.
“She was red-faced and angry,” recalled fellow support group member Mary Jo Kahn. “She said there’s not enough money for breast cancer research—we need to protest too.”
The group agreed immediately.
They had just two months to organize the event. They recruited speakers, contacted the media, and even enlisted their children to help make protest signs.
About fifty people attended the rally. Doctors and nurses were there. A reporter was there.
“Our children had made posters that ended up on the front page of the next day’s newspaper,” Kahn remembered. “The Richmond Times-Dispatch ran a full story about the state of breast cancer research and our newly forming organization. We had met our first goal: to raise awareness.”
The rally sparked something bigger than anyone in that room expected.
Five women from that support group—Patti Goodall, Sherry Kohlenberg, Mary Jo Ellis Kahn, Judi Ellis, and Phoebe Antrim—decided to create a new organization.
The Virginia Breast Cancer Foundation was born.
“After the rally was over, the five of us knew we had another goal yet to meet,” said Kahn. “We needed to make sure there was enough research funding—not just to make progress against breast cancer, but enough actually to eradicate the disease. Most of us had young children. What we were fighting for was prevention.”
Part Two: A Grassroots Movement
Mary Jo Ellis Kahn was no stranger to breast cancer.
Her mother had been diagnosed at age 39 and died of it eight years later. In 1989, when Mary Jo herself was 39, she discovered a lump and was diagnosed with breast cancer. While she was in the hospital undergoing a mastectomy, her sister Judi—then 41—received the same diagnosis.
Two more sisters would later choose prophylactic mastectomies in their mid-thirties.
Mary Jo reflected on how little had changed over the decades.
“When my mother was diagnosed in the 1960s, the words breast and cancer were almost never said in public,” she said. “Twenty years later some things had changed. Cancer could be discussed openly, even breasts could be, but breast cancer was still whispered about as if it were something embarrassing.”
Meanwhile, the lifetime risk of developing the disease had risen steadily—from about 1 in 20 when her mother was diagnosed to nearly 1 in 9 by the time Mary Jo and her sister were diagnosed in 1989.
Despite this alarming rise, there was little press coverage and limited public attention.
“Breast cancer was a silent epidemic,” Kahn said.
But that silence was about to change.
Across the United States, women affected by breast cancer were organizing. Small advocacy groups were forming. Rallies were taking place across the country.
Mary Jo Ellis Kahn meets with U.S. Senator & former VA Governor Charles Robb during early breast cancer advocacy efforts.
While planning Virginia’s State Capitol rally, Patti stayed in contact with Elenor Pred in California. Eventually, several of the founders made an impromptu trip to Charlottesville when they heard Pred was visiting family there.
“One night Patti, Mary Jo, Sherry Kohlenberg, Phoebe Antrim, and I got in the car and drove to Charlottesville,” Judi Ellis recalled. “Elenor Pred was there visiting her grandchildren. She was a real ‘in your face’ activist.”
Pred later invited advocates from around the country to gather in Washington, DC.
Mary Jo rearranged her schedule to attend and represent the newly formed—but still unnamed—Virginia group. She traveled with her 12-year-old daughter, Michelle.
Women from Arizona, Boston, Vermont, San Diego, and many other places gathered for the meeting.
Looking around the room, Mary Jo realized something remarkable was happening.
“Separately, but simultaneously, there were strong, intelligent, articulate women from all over America saying, ‘Enough is enough,’” she recalled. “It was a true grassroots movement—not led from the top down, but by the unified determination of many.”
“At that moment, I realized we were an unstoppable force.”
The group met with leaders at the National Cancer Institute to discuss breast cancer research funding. Instead of finding support, they were largely dismissed. Officials insisted that $30 million was more than enough funding and that the women should be satisfied with the progress being made.
They were not.
The following day, more than one hundred breast cancer groups gathered to explore forming a national coalition focused on increasing federal research funding.
Mary Jo introduced herself simply.
“I’m from Richmond, Virginia,” she said. “I represent a group to be named later.”
They may not have chosen a name yet, but they already knew they would be part of the effort.
After returning home, Mary Jo organized a meeting at her house where about twenty people gathered to name the organization.
They chose the Virginia Breast Cancer Foundation.
VBCF quickly became involved with the newly formed National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC). The organization helped build the national advocacy network and later chaired NBCC’s Grassroots Taskforce.
One of the first major initiatives was the Do the Write Thing Campaign, which aimed to collect 175,000 letters to Congress and the President—one for each projected breast cancer diagnosis that year.
Virginia’s goal was 4,200 letters.
VBCF advocates collected tens of thousands.
Across the country, more than 600,000 letters were gathered. Over 175,000 were addressed directly to President George H.W. Bush.
VBCF transported the letters to Washington, DC on a chartered bus filled with advocates. At a press conference on the steps of the Capitol, participants read excerpts from the personal letters before delivering boxes of them to congressional offices.
The message was clear: the breast cancer community was organized and impossible to ignore.
That year, the vote in Congress for increased breast cancer research funding came down to the wire.
In the end, Congress approved $300 million in additional funding for breast cancer research.
It was a turning point.
Part Three: A Voice That Would Not Be Silenced
On April 24, 1990, Sherry Kohlenberg stepped into the shower thinking about a conversation she had with a friend whose mother and grandmother had both died of breast cancer.
The friend had once said the only elective surgery she would consider was a prophylactic mastectomy.
With a sinking feeling, Sherry felt a hard lump under her arm.
After stepping out of the shower, she asked her husband Larry to feel it too.
She called her doctor immediately.
Within hours she had undergone an exam, a mammogram, and a fine needle aspiration biopsy. Ten minutes later, the surgeon returned and asked the couple to sit down.
Sherry had breast cancer—in both her breast and a lymph node.
Sherry Kohlenberg pictured with her husband, Larry Goldman, and their son Sam before her diagnosis.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she later recalled. “I was sitting in a tiny exam room and someone was telling me I had cancer. My husband and I held each other. He was brave. I cried.”
Sherry was only 34 and had a young son at home.
She entered an experimental study involving high-dose chemotherapy before surgery. Doctors warned that the treatment might prevent her from having more children. She and Larry had hoped for a large family.
The night before her second treatment, her hair fell out. Each round of chemotherapy left her exhausted and sick for days. Friends and family rotated through the house to help care for the family.
Through everything, Sherry worried most about her young son. She tried to explain what was happening in simple terms, telling him she would feel sick for a few days but would get better.
After months of chemotherapy, Sherry underwent a modified radical mastectomy. She could feel the tumors shrinking and believed the cancer might be gone.
But the pathology report showed cancer in her lymph nodes.
She began another six months of chemotherapy.
Even while facing her own illness, Sherry became a powerful national advocate for breast cancer research.
In 1992, she attended a meeting between the National Breast Cancer Coalition and the Clinton presidential campaign in Williamsburg, Virginia.
She had been released from the hospital that very morning after undergoing a bone marrow transplant. Wearing a surgical mask, she presented Hillary Clinton with a photograph of herself taken before her diagnosis and shared her story.
When campaign aides said the meeting had run out of time, Hillary Clinton refused to leave until she had heard from every woman in the room.
Later that year, Bill Clinton was elected President of the United States.
During the 1993 inauguration, the Clintons invited several people who had impacted them during the campaign to participate in the “Faces of Hope” program.
Sherry was one of them.
Just months later, she delivered the keynote speech at a national Mother’s Day rally in Washington, DC.
“This year, 46,000 women will die of breast cancer,” she said. “I will probably be among those statistics. I will leave behind my husband and partner of 18 years, a motherless child, a devastated family, and too many friends.”
“I will not get to watch my son grow up or grow old with my husband.”
“Enough is enough,” she said. “We can no longer keep silent.”
“Breast cancer is stealing my life, but I will not go silently. I will go shouting into that dark night: Enough is enough.”
Sherry Kohlenberg died on July 14, 1993, at the age of 37.
Before her death, she completed a children’s book titled Sammy’s Mommy Has Cancer, written to help families explain cancer to young children. The book was published just months later and received the American Medical Writers Association’s Best Book of 1994 award.
Sherry believed deeply in the power of speaking out.
She understood that her story—and the stories of countless others—could drive change. As a co-founder of VBCF, she empowered others to raise their voices and demand progress.
Thirty-five years later, the work these women began continues.
Because of advocacy efforts like theirs, federal investment in breast cancer research has grown dramatically, screening and treatment options have improved, and millions of people have benefited from advances in care.
Yet the mission remains unfinished. VBCF continues to advocate for better access to care, stronger patient protections, and the research needed to end breast cancer altogether.
The Virginia Breast Cancer Foundation carries forward the determination and courage of its founders—women who refused to stay silent and demanded that breast cancer be taken seriously.
Their voices helped ignite a movement.
And today, that movement continues—through advocates, survivors, families, and supporters across Virginia who are working together to improve the lives of those affected by breast cancer and to demand nothing less than a cure.
Your gift helps continue 35 years of advocacy, education, and support for Virginians affected by breast cancer.
