Wall of Hope' goes up in Walnut Creek

By Janice De Jesus
Times Staff Writer
(Published September 6, 2003)

Katherine Dwight was on her way to mail a few letters at the post office when display of photographs caught her eye.

"These are all beautiful women," said Dwight, amazed at the hundreds of colorful portraits on the wall in front of the Walnut Creek post office. "They're as pretty as can be."

She was even more amazed to find out the faces were those of breast cancer survivors. Dwight quickly reached into her purse for some cash and handed a donation to a volunteer.

"My daughter-in-law is a breast cancer survivor and my sister had to have three cancer operations," said the 85-year-old Walnut Creek resident.

Dwight said the smiling faces on the wall will bring a ray of hope that many people will survive breast cancer.

Marilyn Axelrod Burch said she created the Wall of Hope to generate just such a sentiment.

Burch, a Danville resident, began the Wall of Hope in 1994, four years after she and her mother, Sylvia Feldman, both were diagnosed with breast cancer.

"At the time, I felt there was too little attention to breast cancer, not enough visibility and no representation of the women and men that were getting this disease," Burch said.

So she organized community gatherings where breast cancer survivors received makeovers by Mary Kay stylists and then had their photos taken by professional studio photographers.
The photos were gathered in Northern and Southern California, as for south as San Diego and became the Wall of Hope. The display soon grew so large that it had to be divided into two, each 100 feet long – one for the northern part of the state and the other for the south.

After its first showing in May 1995 at a breast cancer awareness rally at the Capitol in Sacramento, the Wall of Hope has traveled all over the state and even made it to the second world conference on breast cancer in Ottawa, Canada, in 1999.

“As it grew, new avenues opened up and new ideas kept coming,” Burch said. “I realized that other states could participate and it wouldn’t be too difficult for them to build a 100-foot wall also.”
Burch said if every state built one, the display would be a mile long. Her goal is to have all 50 states represented in a “mile of Survival.” After she accomplishes that, she hopes to organize a gathering in Washington, D.C.

“I think it would be as powerful as AIDS quilt in Washington,” she said. “We want people to be aware of and educated on the environmental links to breast cancer and other cancers. That’s what we want to focus attention on.”

The Wall of Hope will be on display today from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Walnut Creek Post Office, 2070 N. Broadway.

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