Facing Adversity and Finding a Reason to Smile
James L. Davis
Their shaved heads tell part of the story. Their eyes tell the rest of the story.
The pictures of Jan Hanson and her grandsons Quin and Braydon Roberts with their heads shaved, huddled close together and smiling softly for the camera whisper of the love the boys feel and the support they wanted to give their grandmother as she battles breast cancer. The sparkle in all of their eyes shouts that it is a battle they plan on winning.
Smiling in the face of adversity is a matter of attitude and a life lesson Jan has long believed in. It is something she has tried to teach not only her children and grandchildren, but her students at Cottonwood Elementary in Orangeville, where she has taught for the past 30 years.
“I’ve got a lot of kids that look at me and you have to teach them how to face adversity,” Jan said, sitting in the living room of her home in Orangeville, with her daughter Liza and grandsons beside her.
But on Jan. 18 when a mammogram picked up a lump the size of a marble in her chest, adversity glared back at Jan with full force. Jan and her husband Jae were told she would need a mastectomy to rid herself of the cancer and the devastating news brought tears to her eyes, but not for long.
“I cried for about 30 seconds and said OK. What are you going to do?” Jan said.
From that moment forward her strength in the face of cancer has awed her family and friends.
“We all thought she was faking her positive attitude for our benefit,” Liza said.
Knowing that she needed surgery, Jan asked the doctors if it could wait, she was acting in a stage production of The Sound of Music and didn’t want to bow out of the play. She was told she could wait on the surgery until after the play.
“We all thought she was nuts,” Liza said, smiling.
Jan had surgery on March 4 and was back in the classroom after a week, where she was met by a classroom of sixth grade students that have been curious, sympathetic and supportive. Jan never hid the battle she was fighting from her students, instead, she used it as an educational tool.
“There are things to learn at school other than reading and writing and math. Kids need to learn how to face life’s challenges. I’ve always been aware that there are eyes on me,” said the University of Utah graduate.
Jan underwent her first chemotherapy treatment in early April and faced her second treatment on April 25. She will undergo her last treatment on June 7 and after her first treatment she knew the day would come when her hair began to fall out from the chemotherapy.. She didn’t let that cold, hard fact slow her down, but when Liza said that when the time came Quin, 4, and Braydon, 10, wanted to shave their heads to match their grandmother, dealing with the side effects of chemotherapy treatment wasn’t quite as difficult.
“It made a hard thing easier,” Jan said.
With the decision made that when Jan began to lose her hair they would throw a head shaving party, 4-year-old Quin could hardly wait for the day to come. The day arrived on April 20, when Jan said her hair was coming out in clumps. So that Sunday night the family gathered at the Hanson home and the shaving began, first playfully as they gave each other Mohawks and then shaving their heads smooth. Even Quin and Braydon’s dad, Mike, sat down and had his head shaved.
The next day it was back to school and Jan wore her new wig to school for the first time. She said she showed her class her shaved head once and then told them they wouldn’t see it again as she put her wig back on.
“When I wore my wig for the first time one of the boys said ‘wow, you look a lot better.’ I must have looked like a real train wreck before,” Jan laughed.
For Braydon, who also attends Cottonwood Elementary, the reaction from his classmates upon arriving to school without his hair, was perhaps predictable.
“They all wanted to rub my head,” he said.
Having battled against cancer and now struggling against the effects of chemotherapy, Jan said she has been amazed at the support of her family and friends and the faculty and students of Cottonwood.
“The faculty is like my family. They’re like my brothers and sisters. We have literally raised our families together,” Jan said.
Her determination and positive outlook has been both a source of fierce pride from her family, and at times a source of frustration.
“All of her fears are based on how is this going to impact everyone else. I think she wants us all to be OK, so she makes it OK,” Liza said.
“I teach my students that attitude is everything. It would be really easy to lie down on the couch and say I’m not moving until this is over, but I can’t do that,” Jan replied.
And for the teacher who has used her battle with cancer to teach her students, children and grandchildren how to face adversity, she has also learned a thing or two along the way.
“I didn’t have enough respect for cancer. I’ve been blessed, but it’s still a pain. Chemotherapy is not for sissies,” she said.
If there was one thing she could convince all women to take seriously is the need for regular mammograms. She said her cancer was very deep in her chest and it would have taken a long time to ever have been discovered without a mammogram.
And as Jan and her family await the day when her chemotherapy is behind her and life can return to normal, they still marvel at the mother, grandmother and teacher for her steely stare and soft smile in the face of adversity.
“I come from strong pioneer stock,” Jan said with a shrug. “They did what had to be done.”
Failing Road Patched Back Together
Josie Luke
Recent road problems on State Highway 10 and the resulting attempts to fix the road have at times caused headaches for local drivers. With temperatures warming, the metal plates used to make the road passable were removed last week, and a patch was put in and the road leveled out so that speeds could return to normal.
According to Dave Babcock, road operations manager for the Price district of the Utah Department of Transportation, the problems resulted from “a severe winter and a worn out road.”
The issues began on Feb. 27, when the first pothole appeared at mile post 58.2 because of a road base failure in the sub-grade due to frost and moisture from the wet winter. Workers tried hand patching the hole, but it kept growing, eventually becoming what Babcock referred to as “kind of like a bowl of Jell-O.”
On Feb. 28, after an automobile accident occurred, workers dug out the hole and tried to patch it with winter cold mix, but it again became unstable, so they had to put in a temporary detour. In brainstorming for a solution, it was decided that they might try covering the area with steel trench plates.
They rented the plates on March 6, which they welded together to form a plate 52 feet long and 12 feet wide. They used six inch lag bolts to hold it in place and made temporary ramps, so that cars could go over. The speed limit was also reduced to 45 mph to keep the plate in place and prevent accidents.
The second hole blew out on April 11 at mile post 59.1. They were able to acquire three more plates on April 15 to patch that hole.
Finally, on April 21 they excavated the second hole and replaced the bad material with a temporary patch of hot asphalt and did the same to the larger hole the next day. On April 23, they applied a leveling course over the entire area that they had to patch, and increased the speed limit back to 65 mph.
They hope that with warmer temperatures around the middle of May, to came back and put an overlay over the affected area. Babcock was pleased that the plates worked to keep traffic running in the meantime. “It’s actually a great success story,” he said, but warned, “It’s possible it could happen again. The road is worn out.”
Bevan Wilson, a member of the Utah Transportation Commission confirmed Babcock’s warning saying, “There’s just not enough base underneath that road to hold it. When the clay gets wet, it just won’t hold together.”
The problem is timely. At the UTC meetings held last week, Wilson gave a presentation to the commission about the structural failure of that section of Highway 10. The commission was considering including that five mile section of Highway 10 as a project in 2012 at their STIP workshop last week, but Wilson petitioned the UTC to address the problem in the 2009 fiscal year. The project will require approximately $15 million, and with much of the transportation funding going to Northern Utah, there just isn’t much discretionary funding available.
But Wilson is cautiously optimistic about “getting something coming for that section of road” and hopes to have a firm commitment from the UTC in the next 30 days.
Republicans Gather for Convention
Josie Luke
The Emery County Republican Party Convention was held April 25 at Huntington Elementary, where county delegates had the opportunity to nominate incumbent Drew Sitterud as their candidate for Emery County Commission and to listen to a number of Republican candidates running for office, including David Hinkins, who is running for State Senate against the Democratic candidate, Brad King.
Commissioner Sitterud began his remarks by thanking those present for the “privilege and honor” of serving them as a commissioner. He also addressed the recent news that property taxes in the area would be going up, relating that the commission had voted to pass the lowest percentage possible, saying, “We couldn’t have done that unless the Republicans were in control.”
Sitterud also explained that the county had benefited because of his position on the Community Impact Board, and warned that if he were to lose his position on the commission, the CIB seat would not come back to an Emery County Commissioner for many years, reporting, “Once I leave, it goes back to San Juan, where commissioners seem to stay forever.”
He also pointed to the success he, along with several others had in pushing the Forest Service to grant permission for the memorial to be built near the Crandall Canyon mine disaster site. Although it normally can take years for such permission to be granted, he reported, “We will get that permit in June.”
Hinkins began by explaining that originally each county in Utah had one senator, but with the population growth in Northern Utah, citizens have had Aless and less of a voice in rural Utah.” He continued, stating that because Emery County has been represented by someone “from the minority party, I don’t think we’ve had a voice at all.”
He also said that if he was voted in as a senator, he would bring other senators down and Ashow them exactly what it is like to live in Emery County and to meet everybody here.” He concluded by saying, “I think it’s time we’re represented by someone from Emery County.”
A number of other candidates spoke, including Lt. Governor Gary Herbert, Charles Smith, an alternative Republican candidate for governor, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, State Representative Kay Mciff, four Republican candidates for U.S. Congress and a representative for Senator Bob Bennett.
Delegates also ratified a new county platform, after some discussion on wording. The previous platform had been approved years before, so the party had formed a platform committee to revise the outdated one to better fit current circumstances.
The State Republican Convention will be held at Utah Valley Community College’s McKay Events Center on May 10.
Local Businesses Benefiting from New Program
The Governor’s Office of Economic Development recently announced the acceptance of Rural Fast Track Program incentive applications and is in the process of funding several existing rural Utah companies.
For the first time in Utah history, very small Utah companies have a program to assist their growth. The program, which was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Huntsman, will offer help to rural Utah companies that are at least two years old and in a growth mode.
The expectation of the program is consistent with Governor Huntsman’s plan for broad based, statewide economic development.
“Utah’s small businesses have always been a vital part of the Utah economy. When a company adds one or two or even a dozen new employees to their payroll in a small rural community, that growth can have a major impact for good,” said Governor Jon Huntsman. “The companies we have recently assisted demonstrate that rural Utah produces significant world class products and services.”
The Rural Fast Track Program is designed specifically for businesses in communities with a county population less than 30,000 people and with an average county household income of less than $60,000. RFT provides an efficient way for existing, small companies to receive incentives for creating high paying jobs in the rural areas of the state to further promote economic development. Under this program, 20 percent of the Industrial Assistance Fund may be used as an incentive for companies to expand in rural Utah.
According to Mike McCandless, Emery County Economic Development director, the program is not available to retail businesses and was intended to focus on manufacturing and service related industries. He said that business owners need to realize that the program is intended to lead to new jobs or expanded wages of existing jobs.
Allen Childs, president of Talon Resources in Huntington, Emery County has worked hard to build an engineering, consulting and surveying company in the heart of Utah’s coal and mining country. However before they could grow their business they had to solidify the business niche they had.
“To solidify our business, we have to wear many hats; we have to have more than one profit center. With our goal of growing our business, we have had to wait, and sometimes miss opportunities, due to traditional financing and our ability to acquire new loans,” said Allen Childs. “With this Rural Fast Track Program, we have opportunity to expedite our ability to grow our business and take advantage of opportunities that are available to us now! Our state has been great at providing incentives for large corporations to relocate to Utah. It was good to see that the great State of Utah is concerned and recognizes the importance Utah’s small businesses.”
Talon anticipates hiring 11 additional full time employees. These positions will be filled from the Emery and Carbon county area, from the displaced worker ranks or from the young individuals that are just starting into the job market. Childs is interested in building his community.
“We feel that we will be able to keep a small segment of our young workers home. They can start their careers and not have to move away from the county they call home,” said Allen Childs. “We will be able to provide jobs that will provide employees with growth potential and a higher than average county wage.”
Charles Bardsley, Owner of Mine Systems Company in Helper, Carbon County expects to add two critically important new positions to their firm. Bardsley found that the Rural Fast Track grant would help him leverage dollars he was borrowing. “Finding out that we had this resource available came at the most opportune time. I had been worried about where the money was going to come from to expand our company operations in the industrial battery repair business,” said Charles Bardsley. “This grant allows us to go to our lender and leverage the other $100,000.00 needed to complete our expansion project.”
In the coal mining industry industrial batteries are used in various ways. Batteries in need of repair are currently shipped back to the east coast. Now that the Mine Systems battery shop has opened, they are able to service batteries locally. Not only will the mines be saving money and time, but Mine Systems will be more profitable. This is a true win-win for company, community and the state, according to program representatives.
Rural Fast Track funds are limited, but because of the structure of the program, incentives will be available each year to a number of firms. There are substantial business tools available to businesses in the rural areas of our state.
“This is a great time to be in business in Utah, by partnering with financial institutions, venture capital sources, the Small Business Administration, the Small Business Development Centers, Manufacturers Extension Partnership, EDCUtah, trade associations and our college and university system business leaders now have more assistance than ever before, said Jason Perry, Executive Director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. “Combined with hard work and these resources, the Utah business community can keep our State a shining example of a dynamic economy and one of the ‘Best States for Business’ for many years to come.”
McCandless encouraged business owners interested in the program to stop by the Emery County Economic Development Office for more information and help on submitting the application.
“We’ll actually help them through the application process and submit the application for them,” McCandless said.
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