Pink Scarves ‘Piling Up’ in Brooklyn Teacher’s Office
By Mary Frost
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
PEARL STREET — There’s going to be a Holiday Crafts Fair at Brooklyn Friends School in Downtown Brooklyn this Saturday, and by all reports it’s going to be a blow out.
Armies of craft vendors are readying their handmade wares, and dozens of bakers are cooking hundreds of cupcakes. Parents and students have volunteered for dozens of jobs and the gym will be filled with bouncy rides, carnival games and performers.
But this year’s fair will be more than a holiday shopping opportunity. For some participants, the fair will also be a way to help the greater community, and honor a young woman remembered by many in Brooklyn Heights.
“One of our alums — Nancy Block-Zenna — passed away over the summer,” Karen Luks, head of the preschool at Brooklyn Friends, told the Eagle. “She was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer in February 2005.”
Triple negative breast cancer is a newly discovered, virulent form of the disease unresponsive to most treatments. “The term ‘triple negative breast cancer’ is only about two years old — they’re just learning about it,” Luks said.
Nancy Block-Zenna grew up in Brooklyn, graduated from Brooklyn Friends School and went on to teach at P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights before moving to New Jersey, Luks said. “She and my daughter grew up together; her mom is one of my best friends.”
When her family wasn’t sure if their insurance would hold out, good friends raised money to help the family with medical bills. “She had multiple treatments and surgery,” Luks said. It turned out that Nancy’s insurance covered the bills, so her friends decided to use the money they’d raised to start a foundation to fight the disease.
To help, Malaak Compton-Rock, wife of comedian Chris Rock, held a fund-raising party at her New Jersey home. The “Peace, Love and a Cure” fund-raiser drew about 240 people and raised $230,000. “Chris Rock’s wife is a very charitable person,” Luks said. “It was the start of the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation.”
The Knitting Connection
After Nancy’s death in August at the age of 37, Luks said she “just had to do something, so I started knitting. I bought pink wool; before I knew it, I was knitting pink scarves.”
Luks mentioned to some of the other teachers at Brooklyn Friends that she would be selling the scarves at the school’s annual Holiday Crafts Fair to help raise awareness of triple negative breast cancer. All of a sudden, she said, “The kids are knitting, and parents and teachers are knitting. In French teacher Marie-Christine Perry’s knitting club, the children are knitting scarves. The yarn store Knit-A-Way (at 398 Atlantic Ave. near Hoyt) donated $60 worth of yarn.
“I’m starting to get scarves piling up in my office. I had no idea so many people were knitting,” she said. “There’s different kinds of yarn and different kinds of scarves, but they’re all breast-cancer pink,” she said. “Some are quite beautiful.”
Luks says “We’re not doing this to make a bundle — we’re doing it to raise awareness of triple negative breast cancer.”
For information about this disease, please visit www.tnbcfoundation.org/.
The Brooklyn Friends Holiday Crafts Fair takes place Saturday, Dec. 1st, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 375 Pearl St., Downtown Brooklyn near the Marriott. Childcare will be provided from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, call 718-852-1029, or visit: www.brooklynfriends.org.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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