Glynda, who is a cancer survivor herself, spent the majority of her career helping people with cancer through her work as an administrator at Radiation Oncology Associates. She was the person who shepherded Cancer Services requests for funding support through the approval process with ROA leaders. Our staff always found her to be extraordinarily proficient, efficient, kind, and good humored. In 2018, a small local charity helping women with breast cancer contacted Cancer Services and asked us to take on their mission. Hope in a Handbag was founded by a mother-daughter team to provide bags filled with necessities that provide comfort to women immediately after breast cancer surgery. When the daughter died, the mother found it overwhelming to carry on with the program. But she knew Cancer Services would continue the mission. We tapped Glynda Harris to help integrate this important program into our existing services and reach out to the sponsors and supporters of Hope in a Handbag to ensure they would maintain their support. Glynda helps us fill the bags and she even helps us distribute the bags to treatment centers throughout our community. Hope is a Handbag now distributed more than hundreds of the Hope in a Handbags woman all over Northeast Indiana.

Glynda was also the person we called when we needed someone to chair our annual Tribute Dinner gala the year after COVID had caused us to pause this critical fundraising event. Glynda and her good friend Sharon Simmon co-chaired the event. She Glynda accepted this request for help even though she was going through cancer treatment at the time. Not only did the event raise needed funds to help people with cancer, but it also provided a memorable moment of community that shattered the loneliness that many people in Cancer Services’ community were suffering through during COVID.