The Villages Daily Sun

THE VILLAGES — Captain Chemo’s mission is to brighten cancer patients’ lives. He strives to see smiles and hear a little laughter, and he usually gets both from the unique get-up that he wears: A bright red cape, yellow shirt, World War I flying helmet complete with ski goggles.

Donald Clark has found that his superhero character has become his way to spread humor and provide motivational words of encouragement.

“It must be something with the name Clark,” he quipped. Yet, he admits it was more than Superman that inspired him to create Captain Chemo. It was his own battle with cancer that inspired him. Humor became his way of coping with leukemia and Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“Captain Chemo came about to help me deal with mine, after I was first diagnosed three days before Thanksgiving in 2002,” he said. “Humor is a way I deal with a lot of things, and if I can share that with somebody, that is what I do.”

Clark brought down the house during his own treatment sessions. One time he went in with a bright red clown nose. Another time wearing a curly mop of a wig.

“You said my hair would come back, but you didn’t say it would come in like this,” he joked with one doctor.

Residents participating in the Relay for Life in The Villages April 20-21, will have a chance to see Captain Chemo in action. He will be walking in the relay, making the trip from York, Maine, to join his good friend, Villager Mary Jean Huntley, at the local fundraiser for the American Cancer Society.

“When I visit with people, I don’t wear this,” Clark said of his visits with cancer patients in hospice or hospitals. “Captain Chemo comes out for special occasions, primarily at walks.”

When hospital patients hear of Clark’s superhero characters, many patients want to see him in his colorful attire.

“There are times when I visit a patient who says, ‘But, I’ve never seen Captain Chemo.’”

Clark replies: “You haven’t? I know him. Let me make a phone call, and I’ll get him here. I can have him here tomorrow.”

The one-on-one visits with patients are special, as Clark also provides patients with yellow roses as a sign of friendship and Tim Janis’ inspiring CD music to enjoy.

“To be able to bring joy to somebody’s life is rewarding,” Clark said. “To see them smile, to see them laugh, gives me a high.”

Clark came to The Villages last year for the first time, and made visits to the Hospice House, just as he has done this past week.

“My calling, my direction, is toward the elderly,” he said of the patients he sees. “Kids get a lot of attention; they really do. It’s the elderly group that kind of gets pushed aside.”

He wants older patients to know they’re not forgotten.

“It’s nice to walk in and see people who don’t have anybody,” Clark said. “I tell most people that I work with, ‘I don’t know why I had what I had, and I don’t know why you have it, but maybe it’s so we can sit here and talk.’”

“Don is such an inspiration,” said Huntley, who met Captain Chemo at a fundraiser in Maine, and became involved in his mission by providing the yellow roses he gives patients.

Huntley knows what it’s like to sit for months alone in a hospital room. Her husband of 43 years died in January 2002 from terminal lung cancer.

“I wish there had been a Captain Chemo who came into my room and said, ‘Mary Jean, may I talk to you?’ Or someone that handed me yellow roses or Tim Janis’ CDs, I know how helpful that would have been, and I just admire everything that Don does.”

Huntley smiles.

“I’ve been blessed to have people like Don that have been put into my path,” she said. “I’ve laughed again, and I never thought that I would.”

Huntley’s husband, Bob, was at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 — the day of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. — yet he managed to escape.

The family received devastating news the following month, when Bob was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

“Doctors believed it was a result of the smoke and debris from 9/11,” she said. Bob also suffered a stroke before dying in January 2002. Four months after the Sept. 11 tragedy, Mary Jean buried her husband.

She came to The Villages after friends invited her to come down.

“I liked what I saw, and that was it,” she said.

And now that she’s here, Huntley wanted to get involved in the Relay for Life, and she also aspires to become involved in bereavement groups and fundraisers for hospice.

“Life is about making a difference, and the way to do it is to help other people,” she said.

Captain Chemo feels the same way.

“Cancer is not the death sentence that it used to be,” Clark said. “I try to be an inspiration as far as I have Hodgkin’s lymphoma that is in remission, so you can beat it, and I have chronic leukemia, and that means you can live with it, so you can beat it and you can live with it. I try to tell people to just keep hope.”

Theresa Campbell is a senior features writer with the Daily Sun. She can be reached at 753-1119, ext. 9260, or theresa.campbell@thevillagesmedia.com.