| Remembering a champion
For years, Francie Smile tirelessly advocated for breast cancer research, support, and patients.
Smiles, who moved to Montrose as an infant, survived cancer three times in her life. It was another disease that took the former coordinator of San Juan Healthcare Foundation from her family earlier this year. If you never got the chance to know her, please know now that Francie led efforts to raise the funds that ultimately built the San Juan Cancer Center in Montrose. Prior to that, people with cancer had to travel to Grand Junction or further afield for chemo and radiation, increasing expense and stress (it isn't easy to travel when your chemo round has left you exhausted).
During her time in Montrose, the aptly named Smiles raised money for the Bosom Buddies breast cancer support group efforts, was among those driving the annual Bosom Buddies awareness and fundraising walks, and was for many the face of efforts to fight the disease, which kills both men and women each year. This year, a new infusion center being opened at the former Cedar Point Health building on South Fifth Street, is to be named in her honor. The community gathered on Sunday to remember Francie, and although I could not make it, I held her in my thoughts. We miss you, Francie. You were one of a kind.
(Francie, posing as the champion that she was)
— Katharhynn, from the Newsroom.
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