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Uncategorized Wednesday, November 28th 2012 at 12:40 pm

Cancer Organization Gilda’s Club Changes Name Because They Forgot Who Gilda Radner Was

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Gilda’s Club is a network of cancer charities that help patients cope with the disease. It is named after Gilda Radner, an original Saturday Night Live cast member, who died in 1989 of ovarian cancer. She said the disease gave her “membership in an elite club I’d rather not belong to.” The Madison, Wisconsin branch of the organization announced they’re changing their name to the Cancer Support Community in January 2013, leaving Gilda’s legacy behind, and other branches are following suit. This isn’t okay.

In 2009, Gilda’s Club joined with The Wellness Community to form the Cancer Support Community, but local branches of Gilda’s Club kept their name. Until now. The executive director of Gilda’s Club Madison, Lannia Syren said, “One of the realizations we had this year is that our college students were born after Gilda Radner passed, as we are seeing younger and younger adults who are dealing with a cancer diagnosis.”

The concern on their end seems to be that young cancer patients won’t come to them for help because they don’t know who Gilda Radner is, so the name no longer conveys what the organization does. It’s understandable that they want to make it clear to people what they do, but why not change the name to Gilda’s Cancer Support Community. Her quote about being in an “elite club” is a good line, but it can be forgotten. She shouldn’t be.

(via Wisconsin State Journal, image via woofiegrrl)

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  • JLin

    Your title is a poor one. The organization has not “forgotten” who Gilda Radner was. As you point out in the article, “they want to make it clear to people what they do.”

  • http://twitter.com/Toolatekev1 Thomas Hill

    More specifically, the organization hasn’t forgotten, it’s just that younger people don’t know who she is. Seems like a better move would be to educate them about who she was – and why remembering the dead is important.

  • herke anderson

    you got that right. god bless

  • Harriet

    Should it be about being a monument to a deceased celebrity or being a more publicly visible mechanism to combat cancer? I agree that they could have handled this differently or even better but this article is just another poorly written and misleading piece of trash that is becoming all too common on Geekosystem as of late. Are you trying to reduce your number of followers? That seems to be the only thing Geekosystem is good at anymore…

  • No Moss

    Seems what has also been overlooked is how important she was to raising awareness of ovarian cancer and how her experience was instrumental in getting the medical community moving towards developing better testing and early assessement for this. It’s not about a monument to a deceased celebrity. It should be about acknowledging what she did for women by being public with her cancer but, if you’re too young to understand or recognize that, you have no clue why she is as important to women as Susan B. Komen

  • Harriet

    You should have read the entire post: ” I agree that they could have handled this differently or even better…”

    Is the title blatantly misleading? Yes. Did they forget who Gilda Radner was, tarnish her memory, or diminish her contributions? No, not really and certainly not to some level of hubris like the article would imply. You, like the author, seem to have a tedious and melodramatic sense of self-righteousness over this issue. I find both you and pointless articles like this quite boring.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jason.harvey.94 Jason Harvey

    This is disgusting. Change the same because she died 23 years ago and not last week?

  • Anonymous

    And somewhere Gene Wilder shakes his head… He shrugs as his eyes trace the floor and he saunters slowly into his living room.