Pat Thonney

Bob Riter is the retired Executive Director of the Cancer Resource Center. His articles about living with cancer appeared regularly in the Ithaca Journal and on OncoLink. He can be reached at [email protected].

A collection of Bob’s columns, When Your Life is Touched by Cancer: Practical Advice and Insights for Patients, Professionals, and Those Who Care, is available in bookstores nationwide and through online retailers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. All royalties from the sale of the book come to the Cancer Resource Center.

Pat Thonney died last week. She was one of the rocks of the Cancer Resource Center.

Pat was a nutritionist, and food – especially healthy food – was a recurring theme in her life. During her tenure with our groups, we saw our food offerings escalate. We began with coffee and a snack. Then we added soup, later entire meals. Somehow the food made living with cancer just a little easier. It wasn’t so much the food as the community that came with it.

Cancer is a world of uncertainty, but Pat dealt with that uncertainty with just the right balance. She knew that she had a bad disease, but she was going to live as well as she could for as long as she could. She never stopped moving forward and never stopped planning for future happiness.

I noticed that newcomers in our groups always gravitated towards Pat. They loved that she was grounded in both science and faith. To Pat, reality and hope weren’t mutually exclusive. If anything, reality and hope must co-exist to make life whole.

At Pat’s memorial service, everyone commented on her smile. It somehow entered every room before she did, and that smile lingered in every room long after she left.

That smile continues to grace us.

Published with permission of the Ithaca Journal.
Original publication date: April 21, 2012

Click here to see all of Bob’s columns

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Art and Cancer

Art and Cancer: A Collaborative Mail Art Exhibition in Geneva, New York on February 17th, 2024.

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