Today I read an article online that said Gilda's Club is changing its name to The Cancer Support Community Southwest Wisconsin because most young people do not know who Gilda Radner is.
The club's executive director Lannia Syren Stenz said in the article "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 Wisconsin Gilda's club is the fourth such club to change its name.)
So this television/comedic icon, who has been ranked as one of the comedic geniuses of the 20th century, one of the original Saturday Night Live Not Yet Ready for Prime Time Players will have her name removed from the club started in her honor by her husband actor Gene Wilder, Radner's cancer psychotherapist Joanna Bull and broadcaster Joel Siegel.
All because our younger generation of cancer survivors are unaware of who Gilda Radner is.
I guess because its before their time they probably don't know who Chevy Chase or Dan Akroyd, Jane Curtin or John Belushi are.
I bet they do.
Gilda Radner died of ovarian cancer in 1989. Her husband and her friends wanted a place for people to go to not think about cancer.
By changing the name to the Cancer Support Community, it does just the opposite.
If you watch any female comedienne today I am betting that Gilda Radner is up there as one of their influences.
I was 6 when Saturday Night Live debuted in 1975. My parents would sometimes let my brother and I stay up to watch.
Gilda Radner died in 1989.
A 21 year old college student would have been born 3 years after she passed away.
I am guessing the younger generation also don't know who William Stewart Halsted, Larry Page & Sergey Brin or Jack Kilby or Robert Noyce are, even though they should.
Halsted performed the first mastectomy.
Larry Page & Sergey Brin invented Google
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce invented the microchip.
I didn't know who any of those people were, I had to look them up.
I guess their names wouldn't belong on a door of a club either..
If only there was this amazing place where younger people who had cancer could look up information, like who is Gilda Radner, and get it in an instant.
Oh yeah its called "the internet."
As Emily Litella would say: "NEVERMIND"
