10th Annual Living in Pink Honors Carolyn Aldigé, Rachel Brem

The 10th Annual Living in Pink Luncheon & Boutique was held Nov. 1 at the Fairmont Hotel and honored Rachel Brem, M.D., of the George Washington University School of Medicine and presented the Noel Soderberg-Evans Award to Carolyn R. “Bo” Aldigé, who founded the Prevent Cancer Foundation in 1985 in memory of her father, Edward P. Richardson, who died of cancer one year earlier.

Councilman Jack Evans presented the Soderberg-Evans Award, named in honor of his first wife Noel who died of cancer in 2003, to Aldigé. Evans noted that the award is crafted in the image of a Monarch butterfly, by which Noel asked her three children to remember her. In her acceptance speech, Aldigé echoed the butterfly theme, saying a butterfly landed on her father’s casket during his burial. There were few dry eyes in the room with that remark.

Guest speaker Pamela Peeke, M.D., chief medical correspondent for Discovery Health Television, spoke of the “Hero’s Journey,” as explained by mythologist Joseph Campbell, an archetype aptly tied to those afflicted by the scourge of cancer.

Emcee Greta Kreuz, news anchor for ABC 7/ WJLA-TV kept things moving with her witty asides.

Watching over it all was hostess Michele Conley, a two-time breast cancer survivor herself, and founder of Living in Pink, which is dedicated to aiding breast cancer research. Since its inception in 2004, Living in Pink contributions have helped fund a variety of local and national research endeavors to further the prevention and treatment of breast cancer.