Mother’s inspiration behind sisters’ push to educate Black community about health care

“Businesses and supporters like Patty (Young) should be supported for doing the right things.” — President Joe Biden, April 21, 2021

Decades ago, musical ground was broken by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

But on this Mother’s Day, I’d like to direct your attention to ground broken more recently by Patty Young and the Sisters for Prevention.

Most now know that President Joe Biden introduced the Springfield group to the rest of the nation a week before last.

The reason, as my News-Sun colleague Riley Newton reported, is that in a pandemic defined in part by minority reluctance to take coronavirus vaccines, Young and the Sisters helped to schedule 250 people for appointments to get them.

In a little while, I’ll get to the part about how we all can support the Sisters’ future work, as Biden suggests.

But first, I want to remind everyone that the pandemic response is just the latest project of the Sisters, who have been doing groundbreaking work since 2014, when the lagging health outcomes for minorities had emerged as an issue.

Though in another way, Sisters’ story goes back to the 1950s home of Ernestine Gentry, the organization’s spiritual mother.

Although she resided on State Street, Mrs. Gentry lived her life at the crossroads of two of the African American institutions: the church and the hair dresser.

As her 2018 obituary says, the woman who was the youngest of 11 children was also “a lifelong active member of Covenant United Methodist Church and owner and operator of Ernestine’s Beauty Salon.” Not by coincidence, she is being remembered on this Mother’s Day by daughters who are both sisters and Sisters for Prevention.

Patty Gentry Young and Deborah Gentry Woods were on the 12-member board of Sisters that chose the weekend of Mother’s Day for their annual Cancer Awareness Event and Style Show.

“Back then, a lot of folks came home for Mother’s Day,” Young said.

And since that often involved dressing in style for church, doing the same thing the day before Mother’s Day for a life-saving cause seemed a natural, a kind of stylish two-for.

The events have always have educated and celebrated in style – “pastels and pretty colors,” Young says – and often with crowning glory matching hats.

Sisters United was able to gather an audience because Patty Young’s “Young Hair, Inc.” has something in common with her mother’s beauty salon. Although it sits at the corner of Belmont Avenue and High Street, it, too, lives at intersection of the church and the hair salon.

And it has been a place that has cared for more than customers’ hair.

Before helping to found Sisters United, Young was an enthusiastic participant in the American Cancer Society’s “Look Good, Feel Better” program for women with cancer, many of them with breast cancer.

“You got free wigs, you got a free $200 of cosmetics, plus you could be in a room of people that were going through what you were going through to tell you what to do,” Young said.

To the woman who had seen how maintaining their appearances helped many of her friends and customers in the fight, it was as the doctor ordered.

However, she said, “I did not see Blacks participating.”

So, with the help of the American Cancer Society, the Sisters held their first event in 2005. Then when the Cancer Society’s Springfield office was closed, went out on their own.

In doing so, Young sought help from friends “like my neighbor, Miriam Harshaw,” a longtime nurse at the former South High School. She also contacted those she knew in Springfield churches.

Plus, there were all her customers.

After that first year of laying the groundwork, “it just got bigger and bigger,” Young said, soon drawing more than 300 participants year after year.

And as Mrs. Harshaw’s carefully kept records establish, that was no accident, either.

The Sisters smartly decided to have cancer survivors model the event’s always stylish, which did three things: honor and support those who are or were ill; fill seats at the event with the survivors’ friends and family; and, in the process, allow the words “cancer,” “treatment,” “prevention” and “screening” to be spoken aloud in the community.

For while it’s more widely known now that racism, lack of access to care and lack of information contribute to higher rates of suffering among Blacks, Young’s assessment is this: ”On top of (all) that, a lot of it is fear, plain fear.”

Not surprisingly, Sisters programs take advantage of the role so many Black women play in their families.

“It’s usually us women who are going to get checked,” Young said.

And that led the Sisters to focus their 12th annual event on the most common cancer in men, prostate cancer.

The thinking?

“We thought if the minority community knows it could happen to most all men,” Young said, “(women) would make their brothers, husbands and other men get checked.”

In addition to hosting the annual Mother’s Day weekend events, Sisters United has won trophies for participating in community health fairs; helped to recruit women for The Sister Study, which followed 50,000 African American women with breast cancer; and provided a steady source of resources for minorities being treated at the Mercy Health Springfield Regional Cancer Center.

“We have a fund with them that helps any minority patients who need help that’s not covered by other funds,” said Mrs. Harshaw.

The fund has helped to pay utility bills, rent and even buy furnishings for a vacant apartment, though the way it served one cancer patient is more memorable.

“He lost so much weight,” Young said, “he had a rope around his pants. And we were able to purchase clothes to fit him.”

All this helps to explain why Sisters United was a natural ally for the Clark County Combined Health District and Rocking Horse Center’s response to the pandemic. And the Sisters responded as always.

“After the phone call, we just got busy scheduling people,” said Young. “I called some churches, and I also contacted the Links (an organization of Black men) and the National Council of Negro Women.”

The latter was easier, because her sister (Woods) not only served as that organization’s president but was the Sister on the phone scheduling appointments.

That was made easier by the Health District’s giving Woods access to its system, which extended access to others in the Black community.

And word of that, of course, eventually reached the White House.

The coronavirus challenge is a reminder of the serious work Sisters United has always done.

“Just about everybody that’s Black knows someone that’s sick or has died,” Young said. “To me, it just took front stage over everything else.”

She also knew of a dear friend’s grandchild being sickened by the virus, worried that parents refusing to get vaccines might unintentionally put their children at risk, and was aware of the risk because the pandemic made her wait for six months before she could plant a kiss on the cheek of her newest grandson, Justin “Baby J” Bray.

Both Sisters as a whole and the Gentry sisters worry that the work is not done.

“Since they’ve dropped the age (for vaccinations),” said Woods, “I’ve only registered two 16-year-olds, and their grandmothers called and registered them.”

I’d like to send out special Mother’s Day greetings to those two grandmothers, who are at least Honorary Sisters.

And even though Sisters United wasn’t able to overcome the technical problems in setting up a virtual style show this year, I am asking you consider doing what I plan to do: Send a $30 check made out to Sisters United, in care of Young Hair, Inc., 1928 E. High St., Springfield, OH 45505.

There are at least three reasons.

One: It will help the Sisters prepare for next year’s event.

Two: Like Biden said: “Businesses and supporters like Patty (Young) should be supported for doing the right things” – especially in their own town.

Three: On this Mother’s Day, it would please Ernestine Gentry to no end.