Hall of Fame


Michael Milken
 Survivor Inductee

Drew Nieporent
 Humanitarian, 2005

Senator John Mc.Cain
 2004 Inductee

Deirdre and Don Imus
 Humanitarian Award

Geraldine Ferraro, Fran and Jack Dalessandro
 2003 Inductee

Ken Langone
 2003 Humanitarian Award

Patrick McMullan
 2002 Inductee

Douglas McCormick
 2002 Humanitarian Award

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
 2001 Inductee

Nancy Brinker
 2000 Inductee

Carol M. Baldwin
 1999 Inductee

Jill Eikenberry
 1998 Inductee

Harry Belafonte
 1998 Inductee

William R. Johnston
 1998 Humanitarian Award

Linda Ellerbee
 1997 Inductee

Carol M. Baldwin

"You know where they get their acting ability?" the mother of the Baldwin brothers -- Alec, Stephen, Billy and Daniel -- asked in an interview with People magazine. "From me."

A son was getting married and Carol Baldwin had been told she had breast cancer. A double mastectomy was advised, but first she had things to do. Smiling graciously through Stephen's wedding, for starters.


They bought her act: few of the 400 wedding guests knew of her imminent surgery. Before her 1990 ordeal, Baldwin was first and foremost a supermom. She was born Carol Martineau in Syracuse, New York. She met her husband Alexander when they were students at Syracuse University.

They wed in 1954 and moved to Long Island. He taught economics and history and coached football at Massapequa High School. The family grew to include the four boys and two girls, Jane and Elizabeth. Baldwin was up for it. "Oh, it was a never ending challenge," she told People. "When you have six kids, you do a lot to support them. When you had Sunday dinner, you peeled ten pounds of potatoes." She took a market-research job in the '70s.

"She was class mother, in the PTA," Billy told People, "and soccer mom, and my dad was our Little League coach and Cubmaster. It was almost embarrassing how community oriented our family was." This happy odyssey continued for twenty-nine years.

The family's first major challenge was the death of Baldwin's husband in 1983. He had no previous symptoms when he coughed up blood one day. It was metastasized lung cancer. He never complained, showing tremendous bravery in front of his brood. He was dead in six months.

Baldwin's challenge in 1990 was to get back on her feet. It was a grueling battle, a yearlong endurance test complicated by adult-onset diabetes. She had six root canals for abscessed teeth and two emergency operations to stem infections in her chest.

Losing her breasts took an emotional toll. As related to People, Baldwin was living in daughter Elizabeth's Syracuse home during her breast reconstruction. Grandson Jonathan, then 3, surprised his undressed grandmother in the bathroom. "Where are they?" he asked, "Mommy has hers." Baldwin kept her pain and devastation to herself.

"She was afraid to talk to us," Elizabeth related, "because she was afraid she would make us afraid." The family -- which now includes thirteen grandchildren -- continued their unstinting support. And finally, supermom returned.

Her love and concern for her children and grandchildren had motivated her. Baldwin was at last moved to act. "I'm was scaring the living daylights out of them" she told People. "I had to get myself busy doing something."

First, she began talking to other breast-cancer survivors. She took a leadership role in forming the Central New York chapter of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in Syracuse. This Texas-based charity organizes the nation-wide Race for the Cure of breast cancer.

Although she moved back to Syracuse after her family was grown, Baldwin maintains strong ties to Long Island and, with a sharp awareness of the high breast cancer rate in the region, formed the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund in 1996. Its sole purpose is to raise money for breast cancer research at University Hospital and Medical Center at Stony Brook. To date, she has raised over $1 million.

Her six children have actively joined Baldwin in her efforts. Asking others to join her crusade, she is positive that, "together, we can find a cure."

Carol M. Baldwin was inducted into CR&T's Cancer Survivors Hall of Fame on Wednesday, October 20th at a luncheon at Le Cirque 2000 in New York City.