Marianna Cates, founder and executive director of the Cancer Awareness Coalition, died on Wednesday, June 21 (Summer Solstice) after a fourth occurrence of cancer. She was 61 and resided in New Paltz, NY with her husband Ray and her daughter Susan, both cancer survivors.

In November 1993, Marianna Cates held an open meeting to inform the public about environmental carcinogens; the forum drew 75 people and put the issue on the map in the region. A group of concerned citizens joined her efforts, and the Cancer Awareness Coalition was formed as a vehicle to educate the public about pesticides, to encourage growers to use less toxic practices and to promote legislation to protect public health. Since that time the coalition has grown to almost 400 members. For several years prior Marianna Cates had been following the research of Drs. Samuel Epstein, Mary Wolff, Devra Lee Davis and others who make a strong case for pesticides as causative agents in the growing incidence of breast cancers and other cancers.

In addition to organizing local health conferences, Marianna presented testimony and attended public hearings and meetings in Long Island, Manhattan, Syracuse, and Albany, and appeared on local and network TV to share with others what she had learned about the environmental connection to cancer. She also networked with numerous other environmental, health and community organizations and agencies to promote less use of pesticides on the farm, in the home and in schools and to raise awareness of the area's epidemic of cancers, birth defects, learning disabilities and degenerative illnesses.

One of Marianna's main thrusts was organizing the Cancer Awareness Coalition to conduct a health survey in Ulster County to elucidate possible links with pesticide use and other sources of toxic exposures. During the past two years she has compiled an informal registry of hundreds of individuals plagued by serious illnesses. The health survey is scheduled to begin this fall. Ulster County is in the heart of the Hudson Valley's apple growing region and also boasts intensive sweet corn production, some of which is aerially sprayed. Marianna herself was sprayed directly by an airplane spraying the neighboring farm in 1983 and within a short time was stricken with both multiple sclerosis and breast cancer.

Cates was one of those rare individuals whose life consisted of supporting, caring and nurturing others, even while dealing with her own illness. The environmental movement has lost a most gracious and gentle activist and a true friend. Guided by her inspiration, the Board of Directors of the Cancer Awareness Coalition will carry on her work.

NYCAP News Summer 1995 (NYCAP - New York Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides)