Making an IMPACT One Stride at a Time: Meet Tom Canty – Melanoma Survivor, Volunteer Extraordinaire
Tom is a colorful character and melanoma survivor that we’re proud to call our colleague and friend. It’s people like Tom that help us to make an IMPACT across the country. He is an inspiration and someone we greatly admire. The following is a conversation we had with Tom in support of his work at Falmouth this weekend as well on a little background on the man himself. Read on.
This weekend our esteemed volunteer, Tom Canty, will be overseeing the installation of two of our Bright Guard sunscreen stations at the 46thAnnual New Balance Falmouth Road Race. Tom has worked with us on many self-started initiatives such as the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals, the Sodapop Festival in Seabring, Florida, and many others… Tom is a colorful character and melanoma survivor that we’re proud to call our colleague and friend. It’s people like Tom that help us to make an IMPACT across the country. He is an inspiration and someone we greatly admire. The following is a conversation we had with Tom in support of his work at Falmouth this weekend as well on a little background on the man himself. Read on.
Tell us about the Falmouth Road Race – set the scene for us that haven’t been there before. What’s it like?
The Falmouth Road Race is in its 46thyear. It was conceived by bartender Tommy Leonard as a bar to bar race from the Cap’n Kid in Woods Hole to The Brother’s 4 in Falmouth Heights in 1972. e It was a small local event until it came of age in 1975 when Olympic Gold Medalist Frank Shorter and Boston Marathon winner Bill Rodgers raced head to head on the beautiful 7-mile seaside roads. As he was known at the time, “Boston Billy”, won the race and it’s been onward and upward from there. Today, the race is managed by Dave McGillivray Sports Enterprises, has a year-round staff, offers a lot of prize money and draws some of the best of the world class road runners each year including male, female and wheel chair athletes.
You’ve run the race before, right? Tell us about that/those experience(s).
In my running career (back in the day), I ran over 100 races from 3 milers to ½ Marathons and far and away, Falmouth was the marquee event that I always pointed to. I grew up in Falmouth, so it was going home for me and the 7-mile course is the most beautiful race course anywhere, the crowds are huge along the way and so many of my friends would be along the course that I often stopped to talk to people I had not seen in a while. Other than the 1styear I ran for a good finishing time, my time was irrelevant. Because of the crowded starting area and the narrow roads leaving Woods Hole, a good finishing time was near impossible to accomplish but the course, the weekend events leading up to the race, the excitement of the masses of runners at the start, the 30,000 people gathering on the baseball field at the finish in the Heights where free water, yogurt and hotdogs awaited every single runner and their families and friends made the “Falmouth” like no other race, at least for me.
Why are you volunteering to set up the two sun stations at this year’s event?
I decided to set up two Sun Safety Stations for two main reasons – the 12,000 people at the start and the 30,000 people at the finish. I felt it would be too hard to manage disparate standalone dispensers at both locations and the sun station allowed for 4 dispensers plus backup sunscreen stored inside the tower to be in one manageable location. Plus the image of the umbrella and the station itself is a magnet and hopefully we’ll be able to bring a lot of people to the station to use the sunscreen and learn a little about IM.
Why did you get involved with IMPACT Melanoma?
As a stage IV metastatic melanoma survivor, I have always cherished my affiliation with a melanoma support group that I attend at the VNA offices in Norwell MA that, it turns out, is sponsored by IM. When Carol and I moved to FL, I looked everywhere for a similar group and none were available. I went on a personal crusade to find any melanoma related groups in The Sunshine State by calling anyone and everyone in FL from Tampa on the West Coast to Orlando to Daytona in the East, from Gainesville in the North to Palm Beach in the South and found only one organization in the Palm Beach area that was involved with melanoma support of any kind and even they did not have a support group like I was looking for. In December of 2017, I flew up to Boston for my regular 6 month checkup at Dana Farber Cancer Institute with my oncologist Dr. Elizabeth Bookbinder and I told her that I still was still looking but there was still no luck connecting with a group in FL. Dr. Bookbinder informed me that she thought IM was involved in an initiative in FL and gave me Deb Girard’s number to call to see if she had any information that would be useful to me. So I called Deb, told her my story and she referred me to Laurie Seavey who was spearheading the efforts in FL. I met Laurie for the first time in Tampa at Brewster Technical College where she was making a presentation to nursing students and we connected immediately and both felt there was an opportunity for me to get involved and help spread the word about the great work that IM was doing in general but specifically in FL. The rest is history, so they say.
What does it mean to you that this type of organization exists?
That an organization such as IM exists as a resource for the melanoma community is just fantastic because of the crying need to educate the world about this insidious disease and the fact that there are things that everyone can do to mitigate the chances of a death sentence if you do contract this disease. The outreach, the support of groups like the survivors group that I attend and the education programs they have developed make IM like no other organization that I have found and believe me, I have looked.
What do you appreciate about having the platform to bring things such as sunscreen dispensers around to different events such as the Falmouth Road Race?
I am a stage IV melanoma survivor. The 5-year survival rate is somewhere around 10% and I still wonder why I survived and many of my fellow travelers did not. I am told it is called survivors guilt and I have a text book case of it. I have known more people than I care to think of who had the same diagnosis that did not survive; I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones. My wife Carol, who has been the greatest care giver that I could ever hope for and has supported me every step of the way says someone has to make it in order to make the math work. I consider working with and spreading the gospel according to IM a chance to help other people to avoid the incredible ordeal I endured where the hospital stays, months and months of chemo that almost killed me, radiation that almost burned me to the bone, 140-mile round trips to Boston, the work and family upheavals, depression, anxiety and on and on are sometimes too hard to bear. But with Carol, my 3 kids and 2 very dear friends who would drop in on me when I needed them most via text, email, call or drive by, we made it and now it’s my turn to give back in a way that validates my survival and gives me a sense of purpose.
What’s your personal battle cry when it comes to the usage of sunscreen?
Sunscreen may be the most obvious thing to do to practice safe skin, but it is just one of the things that people should do. I call it the first line of defense, but people also need to use wide brimmed hats, sunglasses, long sleeve shirts and pants with UV protection built in, finding shade when possible and while these things seem like they should be common sense, they are not.
Why do YOU use sunscreen?
Growing up post World War II, and even into my adulthood, there was no such thing as sunscreen. My mother was born in 1904 and taught for 20 years, retired, got married and had 3 kids. Her remedy for every malady was “get out and get some vitamin D” because that’s what they had; they had and that’s what she knew. They had no medicines like we have, and they used what they had available. Sunscreen has been available for years now and while damage to my skin may have already been done, I think of it as insurance that I can use to avoid doing any further damage.
When you make your way to an event, what are you hoping the takeaway is for those that you interact with during the day?
I realize that I have a compelling story and, as you saw when we worked the booth together, I am not afraid to share it. I would talk to each person if I had the time to make them aware of the danger to unprotected skin that the sun brings to the party and that they should be aware that they can do something to help themselves, their family, their friends, their posse, whoever, to mitigate the chances of getting skin cancer.
When you make your way home from the event, what is your personal takeaway from how the day unfolds?
I drive away from my IM events always exhilarated but exhausted because when I work an event or a table, I throw everything I have into the experience and I know that I have made a difference. I am so grateful to have a partnership with IM and I am gratified to be able to pay them back for all the good things they have done, the programs they have developed and the corporate and personal partnerships they have forged. I love helping them to advance the brand and help the people we target at the same time. Win / win!
To get involved with IMPACT Melanoma connect with us today! We’d love to hear your story and share with you some of ours.
