Woman seeks donations for breast cancer event

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The deadline for Priscilla Dionne of Madawaska to raise the $2,100 she needs to participate in the Breast Cancer 3-Day is Tuesday, June 28, and she hopes you can help.

Dionne, 27, is registered for the three-day, 60-mile event July 15-17 in Rochester Hills, Mich., and hopes to be walking with her aunt, Susan Dionne Williams of Royal Oak, Mich.

The event benefits the Susan G. Komen Beast Cancer Foundation and the National Philanthropic Trust Breast Cancer Fund.

Through Tuesday, Dionne had raised $1,098, but she said, “If I don’t raise enough money to walk, all the money raised still goes to the Foundation.”

Dionne does not yet have plane reservations either.

“I’m not buying my ticket until I raise all the money,” she said.

The women entered in honor of Dionne’s aunt and Williams’ sister, Rachelle Dionne of St. David, who was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001 and underwent treatment only to have the cancer return in December 2003.

Priscilla Dionne said her “Aunt Susan decided to do this” because Williams is so far away from her sister, and this is Williams’ “way of doing something and making a difference for others in the future.”

When Dionne received the e-mail from her Michigan aunt regarding the event, she told me “I donated, went to the site three days in a row, and it wouldn’t leave me alone. So, only a month ago, I signed up.”

A certified nurse assistant at Ridgewood Estates in Madawaska who also works for Resource for Change in that community, Dionne is a single mother of two and a college student at the University of Maine at Fort Kent.

The daughter of Gilbert and Patricia Dionne of Frenchville, by way of Niantic, Conn., she admits that she hasn’t been doing much training because “I’ve been so obsessed with raising the money.”

She has been “walking a little bit, here and there,” but, meanwhile, she said, her Aunt Susan, who has been training, diligently, has a sprain and hopes just to finish the walk.

Coincidentally, the Acadian Festival is June 23-26 in Madawaska, Dionne said, and this year “it is honoring the Dionne family,” so she hopes this will encourage family members to contribute to her effort to participate in this fund-raiser.

You can contribute online at www.the3day.org. Click on “Michigan,” then click “Sponsor a Participant” on the left side of the screen and type Dionne’s name. Her ID number is 81338437.

If you prefer, you can call her at 728-6203 to mail a donation.

Just five days remain. I really hope she makes it.

Trustee Sue Kircheis, secretary of the Simpson Memorial Library, invites the public to an open house from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, June 25, at the library in Carmel Village “to introduce the 56 new children’s books purchased with grant monies from the Libra Foundation.”

A special reading of Candace Fleming’s “Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!” for children from preschool age to about grade three, will be offered at 11 a.m. that day.

The library is open Tuesdays, Thursday and Saturdays, “and is an invaluable community resource,” Kircheis wrote, reminding readers “everyone is encouraged to attend this open house,” and you can receive additional information by calling librarian Tracey Hotham at 848-7145.

If you have not already heard the Bangor Symphony Orchestra perform Thomas Oboe Lee’s Symphony No. 6: “The Penobscot River,” you should take advantage of one of these opportunities. It’s an event not to be missed.

BSO Music Director and Conductor Xiao-Lu Li will conduct the symphony at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 25, in Walker Auditorium at Stearns High School in Millinocket and 3 p.m. Sunday, June 26, at Bucksport Middle School Auditorium.

At the Millinocket performance, 13-year-old award-winning singer Gwyndolyn Morneault will sing “America the Beautiful.”

Well-known local performer-baritone Alan Bailey will sing “America the Beautiful” during the BSO’s tour in Bucks-port.

“The Penobscot River” is a commissioned work that reminisces about days on the Penobscot.

Advance tickets are $10 for adults, $8 for seniors, $5 for youth under 18 and a $30 family maximum per household.

They can be reserved at the BSO Box Office, 51A Main St., Bangor; by calling the BSO at 942-5555 or (800) 639-3221; at Maine Country Charms in Millinocket; and BookStacks in Bucksport.

More information is available at bangorsymphony.com.

Joni Averill, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402; 990-8288.