As a primary grades teacher, Eileen Healy gets plenty of questions each year — most of them starting with "why?"

This year she is teaching kindergarten at the Bush Elementary School in Jamestown, and is looking forward to answering why comic book heroes and TV characters don't do homework or chores, why the sky is blue and why people kiss.

"I love that age because everything you need to know you learn in kindergarten," said Healy, who has taught for more than 20 years, serves as the treasurer and membership officer of the Jamestown Teachers Association and serves on NYSUT's Board of Directors.

Among the questions she doesn't know the answer to, though, is why people get cancer or die. Her mother got breast cancer 36 years ago.

It was the first cancer my mother had and we still don't know, just like so many other women don't know, why she got it," Healy said.

Like many NYSUT members, Healy focuses on what she knows and can do: She has a mammogram and tells others to get one.

"Mammography examination is the best method for finding cancerous cells at the earliest stages of the disease," said NYSUT Vice President Maria Neira, who leads the union's American Cancer Society initiative.

Unfortunately, Neira noted, new statistics show that the number of women getting mammograms has decreased.

Last year NYSUT — long a statewide flagship sponsor of the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walks — teamed up with ACS and local unions in six targeted cities for an educational campaign about the importance of mammography in reducing the mortality rate from breast cancer.

More invited

NYSUT hopes to expand that effort this year, inviting locals in 11 more cities to join the effort by conducting news conferences and distributing NYSUT-made fliers urging women over 40 to get a mammogram. Information will be provided on how to get one free if women are uninsured and can't afford one.

Last year, union members across the state collected more than $1 million with 10,000 walkers. NYSUT has pledged the union will again cross the million-dollar mark.

Healy will be among the walkers because she knows raising money to fund research may find the cause or cure for breast cancer.

Largest group

This year, Healey is the JTA's team leader and will join her union sisters and brothers across the southwestern New York region. They make up the largest contingent of participants in the Jamestown Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk.

Neira will be making strides with locals from the Capital District Oct. 19 in Albany, and Healy will be in step with other southwestern locals at Jamestown Community College that same day.

The union's strong participation in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walks is inspiring, Healy said, noting that after treatment, her mother was breast cancer-free for 30 years, but succumbed to pancreatic cancer about five years ago.

"You need to experience a walk, and be surrounded by all those wonderful men and women, survivors and those walking for those who have fallen, to realize that together we are all fighting this disease. It gives me hope. It gives us all hope."

For those who need a reminder, Healy points to the last sentence from Robert Fulghum's essay All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: "And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together."

— Betsy Sandberg