For Beth and a cure

  • Published
  • By Kenneth Fine
  • Wright Times Editor
GOLDSBORO, N.C. --  As darkness fell on Raleigh's Glenwood Avenue, 567th REDHORSE Squadron Commander Col. Tim Lamb maintained a steady pace -- the same light jog that had carried him, in just under three hours, some 15 miles.

To passers-by, the sight of a lone runner making his way down the sidewalks that line one of the longer stretches in the state's capital might have seemed ordinary.

They had no way of knowing that his presence there represented only a small part of a journey that would stretch far beyond the next sunrise -- that this particular run was symbolic of a battle that saw his most treasured love lost.

Her name was Beth.

And her courage during a fight with breast cancer that lasted until her death in July is the reason her husband is still on some road or sidewalk even now -- why he won't stop until he completes the 82-mile route from the Durham hospital where she endured numerous surgeries and chemotherapy to the annual fundraiser for cancer research she loved so much.

Nearly a year after Lamb said goodbye to his wife, he chose to take on a challenge he wasn't sure he could meet -- a small symbol, he said, of the uncertainty that accompanies a cancer diagnosis.

"A lot of people do marathons, but I wanted to do something more, something I really don't know ... if I can do," he said May 19. "Maybe in some small way, it symbolizes the fight against cancer. Not only will I need help from my friends and family, but hopefully, God is going to be there beside me. That's the only way I could do this thing.
Obviously, I can't do it by myself."

And since he left Duke Hospital May 20 at 6 p.m., he hasn't had to.

Members of his family, including two of his daughters, Meghan and Chloee, have stayed within a few blocks of him the whole time -- offering words of encouragement and cold drinks from the comfort of their cars.

And Lamb is certain Beth has been beside him, too -- her ever positive outlook reminding him that giving up is not an option until the body finally succumbs to it all.

"I can't tell you for sure I'm going to be able to do it. I hope I can and I'm going to do everything that I possibly can to try and finish, but I can't guarantee you that I'll do it," he said. "Just like Beth had no guarantees. Just like any cancer patient has no guarantees."
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Their love was born almost instantly -- on a blind date that unfolded more than 25 years ago.

"It didn't take either of us long to figure out that this was special," Lamb said. "I just felt like, 'This is it.'"

Nine months later, he asked for her hand.

And over the two decades that followed, they welcomed children -- and then a grandchild -- into their lives.

"She was just one of those mothers. She was special," Lamb said. "She had unbelievable amounts of love to offer."

He can still see her taking picture after picture -- filling more pages of the family photo album as each milestone passed.

And he can see her out on a softball field -- coaching their other daughter, Jessy, to play with the same sense of fearlessness and determination she brought to her cancer battle years later.

"That's just who she was. She really loved coaching the girls," he said. "She would be out there even when she was pregnant with Chloee.

We have pictures of her on the field with her stomach out to here."

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Lamb's voice trembles when he talks about the day Beth was diagnosed with cancer.
It was January 2003.

"Beth, because she was so strong, I think sometimes, she wanted to do things on her own. She actually didn't tell me originally when she was getting the routine exam at Wayne Women's Clinic and the doctor there felt the lump on her breast," Lamb said. "She didn't say anything about it."

But when a follow-up revealed she had cancer, she knew she had to.

"She was alone when she found out. I think when they did whatever they did, the doctor immediately knew it was cancer," he said. "She called me on the phone and when I got home, it was just, I don't know, it's hard to describe the feelings that were going on through my mind.

You're wanting to be positive about everything but at the same time, it's just devastating news. It's hard to know how to deal with it, really."

And then, more untimely news came.


Lamb, an Air Force colonel, was to be deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"Obviously, that brings its own set of issues. I was asked, 'Well, can't you get out of it?' It was, mentally, just a hard time. I'm thinking on the one hand, 'We've got family here. We've got our daughters and her parents, all kinds of family. So even if I can't be here, they can,'" he said. "But at the same time, I'm saying, 'Yeah, but I should be here. I should be going through this with her.'"

The only thing that eased his mind was knowing that 82 miles away, some of the world's best doctors would be taking care of her while he was overseas.

"After the initial shock, I think you adjust. You think, 'We're getting the best treatment possible and you're going to beat this thing.' You have no other choice than to be positive because that's not a time to be negative. And somehow, your mind is able to adjust," he said. "And we made a decision early on that we wanted to go to Duke for her treatments. That was what we considered the best we could find."

And when he returned from theater months later, things were looking up for Beth.
She had made it through the surgeries and chemotherapy -- even without him there beside her.

And she had done it with a smile on her face, something that inspires her husband long after her death.

"She always had just the best attitude about it. She was so positive about what the outcome would be," Lamb said. "She prayed and she just continued her life. She didn't just give up and say, 'It's not worth going on like this.' She continued to live a full life.
"And when I got back, we went through the radiation and at that point ... they do some scans and you're declared, a lot of people say, 'cancer free' or 'in remission,' things like that. And I guess, at the time, that's what we thought the case was for Beth. So our lives continued on, just like before she had cancer."

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Lamb remembers another phone call and fights back tears.

Beth's cancer had returned.

"I remember, I was taking Meghan and Chloee, we were going to see a show ... and we were driving ... and Beth called me and said that in one of the scans they had just done, they found a tumor had wrapped itself around her spinal cord," he said. "At that point, it went from there to surgery, to her being in a wheelchair. We basically realized that the cancer had not only come back, it had spread to her bones.

Once it spreads to your bones, it's not good. It not life-threatening by itself, but you can't do surgery. You can't get rid of it.

"From that point on, she was on chemotherapy, and from there, she would live her life kind of on this one-week cycle. It was not the kind of chemo where it knocked her out completely for several days ... and it didn't cause her to lose her hair, but it would pretty much put her out of commission for about a day. So the rest of Thursday and Friday, it was just kind of recovering from the chemotherapy. And then, she would go on living her life until the next week."

Beth died July 6, only a few days before the birth of her granddaughter.

"But she got to see our grandson being born and she just loved him to death," Lamb said. "She was 'Nanny' to him and that's one of the things I just hate for my grandkids. They are gonna miss that."

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Somewhere between Duke Hospital and Wayne Community College, Lamb continues to battle a tiring body.
But his mind remains strong -- a tribute, he said, to the strength Beth taught him a person stacked against tremendous odds can have.

And he won't stop -- even if he is crawling by the time he reaches her home county's Relay for Life.

"I don't intend to stop for extended periods unless I get to a point where I have to," Lamb said. "But I have no idea how my body is going to react to this. I'll just keep trying to put one foot in front of the other."

Just as Beth did during the last weeks of her life.

Just as he and his children have tried to do every day since they lost her.

But even though, in body, he knows she is gone, he can't help but believe she is with him on that run -- wearing the same smile that lit up his life for more than 20 years.

"Obviously I miss her. I miss the companionship, having somebody to talk to," Lamb said. "But I have prayed about this run. So I hope she's looking down. And I hope that she can look down and smile a little bit at what I'm trying to do."

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It was early afternoon May 21 when Meghan looked back at a road sign that read "Wayne Memorial Drive."
"He's gonna make it now on pure adrenaline," she said, peering down Service Road 1591. "As soon as he sees that sign, he'll know he's almost there."

Moments later, a Goldsboro police car slowed toward where the girl had been standing -- her father maintaining a steady pace not far behind.

But unlike the night before, when he started his 82-mile run, Lamb was not alone.
Several of his comrades from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base were right there with him -- matching him step for step.

"He would do it for us," said Master Sgt. Carrie Baker, one of the half-dozen members of the SJ Runners who met up with Lamb when day broke hours earlier. "Any one of us."
By 1:40, the group had passed Wayne Memorial Hospital.

And by the time they reached the site of the 2010 Relay for Life, an event family members agreed Beth would not have missed were she still alive, all three of Lamb's daughters were by their father's side.

But they had no idea that as they made their way from the college entrance to the Relay track, an announcement was being made over the loudspeakers scattered across the makeshift campgrounds.

"Let's all get together and give this man a Wayne County welcome," the voice said. "This man's been running since last night for his wife."

So by the time the Lamb family reached the track, a crowd had lined it -- cheering, applauding, shedding tears.

"You did it," one woman said, her voice trembling. "You made it."
But their journey didn't end there.

They still had to find the luminarias bearing Beth's name -- a pink heart that signified, much like the shirts each wore, their beloved's struggle.

And when they reached it, they came together for long embraces and an emotional prayer.

Meghan wiped tears from her eyes.

"It's amazing," she said a few moments later, choking up. "I always knew he could do it, but being here now, in daylight, sitting under this shade tree? No. I would never have guessed that."

From a lawnchair just beside her, Lamb wore the same expression he had maintained for the previous 20 hours -- across four counties, from the place where Beth underwent numerous surgeries and chemotherapy, past the Eastern North Carolina town where her body finally succumbed to the disease she had been fighting for more than six years.
"I guess God blessed me with a strong body today and yesterday," he said. "I think He just kind of made things work."

Lamb didn't seem surprised.

He must have known Beth's spirit, too, would be with him step for step -- that the struggle of a woman known for coaching softball would be an inspiration to fight through the wear and tear.

"I didn't really have a lot of doubts," Lamb said, more than four hours before the official start of Relay. "I was going to make it one way or another."