Wife spurred life-saving diagnosis
The Arkansas Prostate Cancer Foundation was expecting to hold its 20th anniversary Blue Ribbon Bash, its premier annual fundraiser, on Friday, with Mark Hayes, executive director of the Arkansas Municipal League, as this year’s honoree.
As with those of so many others, a certain pandemic has interfered with those plans. Hayes will still receive his honors, but he’ll have to wait until August 2021 since the foundation decided to postpone the bash for a year rather than try to put it on as a virtual event.
“There’s no way you can ask people to come to an event with 500600 people,” explains foundation board member David Menz, “and I can’t see it working virtually. I attended a recent Zoom meeting for the Rotary, and it drove me nuts.”
Menz, who retired in December as a founding partner with the now-closed Williams & Anderson law firm, has been on the board more than two years. He’s a donor and also a prostate cancer survivor who has previously sponsored the
Blue Ribbon Bash.
Menz and his wife, Evelyn, recently marked their 39th anniversary, and he credits her with spurring him to get the test that revealed his cancer in the fall of 2006.
“A lot of men go to the doctor because of their spouses,” he says. “She’s a breast cancer survivor and was volunteering at UAMS [the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences], where they used to screen for prostate cancer.
“She told me, ‘I’ll buy you lunch if you come up and get screened.’ Well, I’m all for free lunches, so I agreed.”
The tests were negative for five years, “but the sixth time, there was an anomaly,” he recalls. “They asked me if I wanted them to do a biopsy. It showed I had prostate cancer.”
In addition to working with his doctors, Menz also consulted friends who had also gone through the process, including a urologist and his parish priest. The decision would be either to “watchfully wait,” since the disease was in its early stages, or to treat it more aggressively.
“The options only made it more confusing,” Menz says. He eventually opted for surgery, which was successful.
After his diagnosis, three good friends were also diagnosed as having the disease. “I decided that prostate cancer is contagious,” Menz quips, though he concedes that they might have decided to get tested following Menz’s example.
Another good friend, now recently deceased, was responsible for getting Menz to join the foundation board. “He was a prostate cancer survivor and he badgered me for three or four years to get on the board,” Menz says. “He finally wore me out.”
Rather than delegating details to a committee, the entire board gets involved in putting together the annual Blue Ribbon Bash, “selling tables, finding sponsors, overseeing arrangements, finding items for the silent auction,” Menz says.
The event raises money to support statewide prostate cancer education and screening initiatives, including increasing awareness, encouraging timely detection and engaging men and their families “with personal guidance from diagnosis through survivorship,” according to Melissa Stiles, the foundation’s development director. The foundation provides its services, which include a prostate health resource center, a patient navigation program and a peer network of support groups, free of charge.
Last year’s bash raised more than $205,000, which went toward free prostate cancer screenings for 2,042 men “and more than 14,400 benefiting from our education and awareness efforts.”
Menz has also been a member of the Rotary Club of Little Rock (Club 99) since 1979, and served as its president in the late ’90s, and he’s looking forward to becoming governor of Rotary District 6150, comprising 38 clubs in Central and northeast Arkansas, in a couple of years.
Since his retirement after 45 years of practicing law, Menz says he has learned to play duplicate bridge — currently online, since the pandemic has closed the Bridge House in Little Rock’s Pulaski Heights — “and I’m reading all the books I’ve acquired over the years and have never had time to read.” He’s also raising and training two golden retrievers — 4-year-old Molly and puppy Margeaux — with a goal of getting them to walk in unison.
The American Cancer Society says prostate cancer remains the second leading cause of cancer death in American men, estimating that this year approximately 1,860 men in Arkansas will face a positive diagnosis, and approximately 280 will die from the disease.
Menz says while prostate cancer is usually slow-growing and easily treatable in its early stages, “but once it spreads, it’s not good.”