Special needs advocate survives cancer with help of daughter

JOANN McNamee has always been a caregiver.

She raised her daughter Katie, who has Down syndrome, as a single mother.

After Katie grew up, McNamee founded a nonprofit called Kate’s Place to make sure developmentally delayed adults would have a social outlet in South Jersey.

So when McNamee was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2018, her greatest concern wasn’t about herself, but for her daughter, now 31, and the others who depend on her.

“The worst part was two years prior, Katie lost her father to cancer. I watched her go through all that,” McNamee said. “The first thing out of her mouth was, ‘I don’t want you to die like Daddy did.’ “

McNamee, 63, told her daughter that treatment and medication would make Mom better.

“But I could tell in her eyes she was scared.”

A month after her diagnosis, McNamee had the first of her two surgeries. After recovering from the operations, she needed radiation and chemotherapy.

“I set up my chemo schedule so it would be days we didn’t have the program,” said McNamee, a Riverside resident.

Kate’s Place activities, which include dancing, crafts and community service projects, typically meets on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at First United Methodist Church of Moorestown.

McNamee scaled back the program to twice a week in the summer of 2018 so she could attend chemo appointments and recover from the ravaging effects of the treatment. With the help of her volunteers, she never missed a day.

“They knew when I was not feeling good. I would just say, ‘I’m going to sit over here.’ The volunteers did the physical aspect of it all,” she said.

Dr. Debra Weissbach, a Kate’s Place volunteer and Katie McNamee’s former pediatrician, said volunteers encouraged JoAnn to take time off.

“We kept trying to convince her that she needed to think about taking a break and having Kate’s Place go on a brief hiatus so that she could take care of herself. She was adamant that Kate’s Place would go on, and if the volunteers had to run the show, the volunteers had to run the show,” said Weissbach of Moorestown. “But I think she was always here running the show, with us as her backup.”

McNamee dreaded having to tell Kate’s Place clients about her cancer diagnosis.

“If I could have gotten away with saying it was anything else ... I think they all really were afraid I was going to die.”

Then McNamee figured out a way to lighten the situation. She knew she’d lose her hair as a result of the cancer treatment. So why not just shave it first — with the help of the Kate’s Place crew?

The idea was a hit, said McNamee, a former redhead whose hair grew back white.

“They thought it was the greatest thing shaving my head, then watching (the hair) grow back.”

The experience was “cool,” confirmed RJ Haas, a Kate’s Place client.

“She’s a very nice person,” Haas said of McNamee, adding he was worried about her when she had cancer “but not now.”

While McNamee is awaiting results of some scans, her cancer treatment ended in July and she’s been feeling well.

Haas been attending the program for nearly five years, and said he especially enjoys the ballroom dancing activity and parties.

The social aspect seems key for all the participants.

“I like having friends,” said Katie McNamee, adding she participates in “karate, music and ballroom dancing.”

While fun activities are the focus of Kate’s Place, the program also includes fundraising and community service.

“We just had to teach them that you have to give back,” said JoAnn McNamee, noting she explains to her clients that others help their program.

Their regular projects include making cards to distribute to senior centers, pet toys for animal shelters, and “blessing bags” containing socks and hygiene items for the homeless.

“Every year around the holidays, we try to make blessing bags for the homeless people. We take money that we have had donated to us and we turn around and buy these items,” McNamee said.

Though she said the program participants have always been loving, she was pleasantly surprised by how much support they provided during her cancer battle.

“They were so wonderful in my whole situation,” McNamee said. “They were very compassionate.”

New Jersey’s public education system serves young people with special needs, but only through age 21.

As McNamee and other parents in her circle faced that deadline, they started to realize the void their adult children would feel.

“We knew when they were going to graduate, they weren’t going to have anything to do. In the regular course of things, after children graduate, they go to college, get married, get good jobs, move on with their lives,” McNamee said. “But everything they would be able to do would be all done.”

When talking with fellow parents at a Halloween party, she came up with the concept for Kate’s Place, a program to give young people with special needs the opportunity to socialize and pick up life skills — and even attend a prom once a year. The nonprofit program was founded 12 years ago, and serves around 20 clients ages 18 and up.

Kate’s Place provides an outlet “for these young men and women to get out of their house and have a social life,” said Weissbach. “They’re comfortable and welcome, and they can just be themselves and have a good time.”

“They’re just sweet and caring,” McNamee said of her program’s participants. “They’re sometimes more ‘normal’ than people give them credit for.

“They come into the program and the girls all like the cute boys. The boys all like to see who could burp and fart the loudest. So, typical teenage behavior.”

That’s where the social lessons come in.

“We try to teach them the appropriate way to act,” McNamee said.

There’s a wide range of function levels among Kate’s Place participants. Some of them have jobs, McNamee said.

Others have made marked progress since they started attending Kate’s Place.

“Someone who, when they started, couldn’t even do numbers on bingo, now this person knows every number,” she said.

The namesake of Kate’s Place, Katie McNamee is a quiet but friendly young woman who became her mom’s hero during the cancer ordeal.

“My girl was my home nurse,” Joann McNamee said. “She would help me with everything.”

Though McNamee still prepared meals for her daughter, Katie handled other household chores like dishes and laundry.

“She would ask, ‘Are you all right? Do you need anything?’ “McNamee said. “Just the fact she was here was a huge help. She knows how to call somebody. She’s very proficient with the cell phone.”

Katie said she was happy to help her mother for a simple reason: “She’s a No. 1 mom.”

McNamee, whose cancer treatment ended in July, is grateful for the compassion shown by her daughter — and her other “kids.”

As she recovered, McNamee realized the program she launched to help others ended up benefiting her.

“I know how important it is for me to come in. I don’t know if I would be that strong if I didn’t have that.”

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