PEOPLE / SNIPPETS

Talk About A Journey

Alaska native and throat cancer survivor Lance Mackey won the arduous Iditarod sled dog race in March, wearing lucky No. 13 — the same number worn on winning runs by his father in 1978 and half-brother in 1983. Mackey is the first musher to win the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest and the 1,100-mile Iditarod races in the same year. Mackey, diagnosed with cancer in 2001, underwent surgery and radiation treatment.

A Jewel Back on Stage Renowned soprano Ruth Ann Swenson, who announced in October that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and would undergo chemotherapy and radiation, has picked up where she left off. Swenson, who had just finished a string of performances singing the role of Marguerite in Faust (as pictured at right) at The Metropolitan Opera in New York City, reprised the role at the Met in March, including for a Saturday afternoon live radio broadcast.
		Courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera

Charlie’s Survivors

Key cast members of the 1970s hit television show Charlie’s Angels have something else in common: cancer survivorship.

Last year, the three original Angels — Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith — reunited in public to honor the show’s producer, the late Aaron Spelling, at the Emmy Awards. (Spelling was a five-year survivor of oral cancer before dying after a stroke in 2006.)

In October, Fawcett said she felt tired and sought medical attention. She was diagnosed with a rare form of anal cancer.

A former spokeswoman for the American Cancer Society, Fawcett is no stranger to cancer. She lost her sister, Diane, to lung cancer in 1998; also, her former companion, Ryan O’Neal, recovered from leukemia after being diagnosed with the disease in 2001.

In addition, her Angels co-stars Smith and Jackson, both 59, have successfully battled breast cancer. Jackson is a two-time survivor of breast cancer, in 1987 and 1989, and has undergone a lumpectomy and a partial mastectomy. Smith recovered from breast cancer in 2002 after undergoing a lumpectomy and radiation. Both actresses have been spokeswomen for cancer research and education.

O’Neal, Smith and Jackson all served as significant support figures for Fawcett during her treatment, which involved surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, according to published reports.

“I am deeply grateful to my team of physicians, my loving and supportive family and devoted friends who have sustained me as I battled this terrible disease, strengthened by my faith in God and the encouragement of so many,” Fawcett said in a statement last February announcing that she was cancer-free for her 60th birthday.

Meanwhile, actor John Forsythe, 89, the voice of Charles Townsend in Charlie’s Angels, was diagnosed and treated for colon cancer last September.