CYO legend Bernie Price ‘keeps going’ with joy and faith in her fight against cancer
Bernie Price flashes a two thumps-up sign, reflecting how her cancer diagnosis hasn’t diminished her joyful approach to life and her dedication to the archdiocese’s Catholic Youth Organization, which she has served for 51 years. (Photo by John Shaughnessy)
By John Shaughnessy
Even when you know Bernadette “Bernie” Price and the relentlessly positive approach she has always brought to life, what she did during a recent week makes you shake your head in awe.
On the Monday morning of that week in mid-September, she drove herself to her 24th chemotherapy treatment in the past two years, getting labs taken and having a meeting with her cancer doctor before being hooked up for an hour and a half to let the chemo flow through her body in an attempt to control her ovarian cancer.
Finished with the treatment at noon, she drove straight to the archdiocese’s Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) office in Indianapolis, where she has worked for 51 years. There, she spent the afternoon helping set up a meeting for a committee charged with raising funds for the CYO’s Camp Rancho Framasa in Brown County.
On Tuesday evening of that week, she coached the girls’ high school volleyball team of Good Shepherd Parish in Indianapolis in a CYO match. And after working Wednesday and Thursday for the CYO, she served Friday as the emcee for an Irish festival in Indianapolis.
“No big deal,” Price says with a smile as her eyes shine with joy. “I’m doing pretty good. I have more treatments to go. The cancer is still there. It’s a little bit active but not taking over. The bottom line for me is I don’t have any regrets. I don’t have any sorrows.
“From the very beginning, the diagnosis was not that great. And I immediately said to the doctor, ‘Hey, I don’t have any anxiety. Let’s just put a team together and let’s just go.’ Within two days, the doctors came together and said, ‘We’ll do this, we’ll do this.’
I’ve progressed very well with what I have. I had a 6 1/2-hour surgery, and the next day I’m out walking in the hallway. You keep going. You keep going.”
‘She brightens everybody’s days’
Ask Price what keeps her going, and she immediately starts praising everything and everyone connected with the CYO—the coaches, the volunteers, the children and youths who participate, and all the people she has worked with ever since Bill Kuntz, Sr., hired her in 1973.
“You make a lot of friends over the years. You touch a lot of lives,” she says. “That’s what keeps you going.”
At 73, Price has brought that same combination of making friends and touching lives to Franciscan Health Indianapolis, the setting of her surgeries and treatments.
“Bernie is just a burst of energy,” says Joan Himebrook, who works in the cancer center at Franciscan Health Indianapolis as the community outreach manager for the hospital’s oncology and cardiovascular units. “She’s walking in here with cancer, and she brightens everybody’s day. As she’s walking back for her infusion, she will say, ‘I am so excited to come here and get this today. I’m so excited I get to fight my cancer.’ ”
Himebrook believes that attitude has helped Price in her battle with ovarian cancer, “one of the deadliest because there’s no test for it early on.”
“By the time you get an ovarian cancer diagnosis, it’s usually into a more advanced stage,” says Himebrook, who is also a close friend of Price. “She’s never let anything slow her down. She always speaks positively of healing. She just assumes she’s going to win, and, so far, it’s really worked for her.
“She’s a source of strength for a lot of people when she should be the person wanting strength from others. That’s just a testament to the heart and the spirit that she has always carried with her.”
Even while getting the chemo treatments, Price has turned the sessions into moments of fun and joy. It’s how she has become known and crowned as the “Chemo Cheez-It Queen.”
The joyful and tough parts of the journey
During her first chemo treatment, Price was asked if there was a special kind of treat she would like to have.
“I said, ‘I really like Cheez-It,’ ” Price says. “So, they brought me a bag and then another bag. I’m thinking this is great. They did it the next time and the next time. Just being funny, I sent Kellogg’s [which makes the snack] a picture of me holding Cheez-It at chemo. Their public relations department contacted me and said, ‘We want to follow your journey.’
“Then they started sending me all this Cheez-It swag. That’s how I got to be known as the Chemo Cheez-It Queen.”
Price’s eyes sparkle with delight as she mentions the Cheez-It blanket, baseball cap and earrings she has worn during treatments. It’s her way of stressing the joyful, positive side of life that she strives to make people focus on in this journey. Still, there a few moments in a conversation with her when the tough moments of this journey surface.
“They had a prayer service at Good Shepherd for me. I was still bed-bound at that time, but they streamed it, and some of the Franciscan nurses came in and watched it with me. I thought, ‘Oh my God, look who they’re praying for! It’s me.’ But that was the only time I felt a little emotional about it. I could see some people were upset.”
The journey has also taken her back to thoughts of the one person who is always on her mind—her late husband, Jack Price.
For more than 40 years, Bernie was married to Jack, whom she has described as the person “who will always have first place in my heart and soul.” Then heartbreak struck. At 64, Jack unexpectedly collapsed on Dec. 21,
2011. He died three days later on the morning of Christmas Eve.
It was a time when the importance of her faith struck Price deeply, leading her to say, “You don’t get through every day and enjoy what you’re doing if you don’t have faith. I’ve always had faith, but the turning point where it hit me was when Jack passed away. He was so spiritual. If there’s one person in the world who was prepared to die, it was Jack.”
When the doctors initially told Price that she had ovarian cancer, her thoughts turned to Jack.
“I immediately thought about when Doctor Jack passed away suddenly, I became even stronger. I thought if I can handle that, I can handle this,” she says.
“I thought, ‘Hey, he’s up there watching me. He’ll put a little thumb on it.’ But really, not being disrespectful, I’m glad he’s not here to have to deal with this. I thought to myself, he would be concerned about me, but I would be concerned about his feelings. He’s in a good place, and I’m in a good place.”
That good place includes her relationship with God.
‘I talk to God quite a bit’
“At one point, I remember saying to myself, ‘God put this on you. I’m glad he didn’t put it on someone who couldn’t handle it.’ That’s been my attitude,” she says. “I talk to God quite a bit. I talk about everything. I thank him for watching over me.”
She smiles and adds. “I also told him, ‘God, even with the cancer, I’m still pretty good at making fun of a lot of people and a lot of things. And I really have to be honest, I don’t think that’s going to change. But in a good way.’ We joke back and forth.”
She also prays to him regularly.
“I do special prayers every evening. I’m praying for everything. I pray a lot for the young people, that they have good mentors, and they can continue on in a great world. I pray for all the people who have cancer and their families or people who are just dealing with problems.”
She is also there for people who have cancer when they want to talk, including Father Robert Gilday, pastor of St. Therese of the Infant Jesus (Little Flower) Parish in Indianapolis.
“Right now, I am battling prostate cancer for the second time,” says Father Gilday, a longtime member of the CYO’s board of directors. “Bernie and I regularly update each other on our battles with cancer. From the beginning of her battle with cancer, I have been so impressed by Bernie’s positive, upbeat attitude. She has been a real inspiration to me during this time.”
That’s vintage Bernie
Price has about 2,000 “friends” on Facebook, and she is one of the rare people on social media who could claim a significant number of them as real friends—people who feel truly blessed by knowing her.
“When I post on Facebook, it’s mainly upbeat. I say, ‘Everyone is on my A team, and we’re going to keep the train moving forward.’ When I post something, I probably get—between ‘comments’ and ‘likes’—an average of 600 to 700 at a time. I read every one of them, and they’re all kinds of thank yous.”
In person, she routinely starts a conversation by flashing two thumbs up and saying, “I’ve got this! We’re doing great!”
The people who see her most often—the friends she works with at CYO—marvel at all the ways she continues to touch their lives and others with her humor, faith, love and positive attitude even as her life has been touched by cancer.
She serves as the chapter “mom” for the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Indiana University Indianapolis, a fraternity focused on service that Jack Price once oversaw. She’s the president of her neighborhood association, a group she started after an older veteran was the victim of a home invasion.
She’s also heavily involved in guiding and coaching the youths at Good Shepherd Parish, and she leads an annual fundraiser for Central Catholic School in Indianapolis.
“I’ve always been amazed at how involved Bernie is in so many different causes, and I have been inspired by all that she does to make a profound impact in people’s lives,” says Jack Schmitz, the executive director of the archdiocese’s CYO. “Following her diagnosis, she hasn’t slowed down one bit in her efforts to continually make this organization, and our community, a better place. Bernie’s spirit and attitude are simply incredible.”
Here’s one final story about Price. It’s the story of her involvement with the food pantry for cancer patients and their families at Franciscan Health Indianapolis.
“I started the food pantry last year,” Himebrook says. “I was sitting with Bernie during a treatment this spring. She said, ‘The folks at the Garfield Brewery want to do a fundraiser for me. I don’t need the funds. I’m good. I’m blessed. So, what can we do? Where do you see holes in outreach?’
“I told her I started a food pantry, and I need lots of things. She said, ‘We’re going to have this fundraiser, and all the money raised is going to go to that pantry.’ They raised almost $7,000. I said, ‘Bernie, I’m naming this pantry after you. I named it the Right Price Pantry. Beyond that, she hooked me up to get a refrigerator for some fresh and frozen food for people.”
The people who know her well will say, “That’s vintage Bernie.” So is her request when she is asked about taking some photos of her to complement this story.
“I’m doing it with thumbs up,” she says with a laugh.
Her smile comes easily as she strikes the pose.
“What else can I say except thumbs up, train moving forward.”
It’s the way she has always lived. †
