Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 9, 1994 TAG: 9408090084
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By MELISSA DeVAUGHN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Lois A. Beeken, 56, died Aug. 1 after a long battle with ovarian cancer. Several fund-raisers helped pay for a $132,000 bone marrow transplant after the former teacher and Virginia Tech employee was diagnosed with cancer in September 1991. Her insurance company, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Virginia, would not pay for the operation, which it deemed experimental.
Leona Elliott of Shawsville had her own battle to fight when she became ill in 1987 after contracting hepatitis from a blood transfusion during open heart surgery in 1972. Elliott died Aug. 3. She was 53 years old.
Beeken, formerly Lois Altizer, was well-known in Christiansburg where she had taught English, French and Spanish at the high school for 14 years. She later earned her doctorate at Virginia Tech where she went to work as director of in-service education. She recently was named the first recipient of the Lois A. Beeken Distinguished Service Award by the National Center for Research in Vocational Education.
She had her bone marrow transplant in October 1991 at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. After 21 days in isolation to ward off potentially lethal germs, she was able to spend Thanksgiving at home with her family.
Beeken is survived by her parents and mother-in-law. She had two grown children who are married, four grandchildren, two sisters and a number of extended family members.
About the same time as Beeken's ordeal, Leona and Stan Elliott of Shawsville also battled illness and medical costs as they sought a liver transplant to combat Leona's hepatitis. Because she had no private insurance of her own, and Medicaid would not cover liver transplants, she too, had to turn to the community for support.
The couple raised about $40,000 toward the $150,000 cost of a liver transplant, which was completed in March 1992 at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. The two continued to raise money after the operation to pay off the remaining debt.
After the operation, Leona Elliott hoped for a full recovery. She even planned to visit nursing homes with a religious puppet show of people and animals she created before becoming ill.
"I had the will to live," she said in a August1992 interview. "I had the Lord on my side."
Surviving are her husband, Stanley Elliott, three daughters, a son, two stepsons and three grandchildren. She had five brothers and four sisters.
by CNB