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The Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer today will announce a $10 million pledge for breast cancer research.
The money will go to the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center, where the breast cancer program has almost quadrupled in staff this decade with Vera Bradley's support.
The announced pledge is in addition to three earlier pledges totaling $10 million the foundation has given to the IU Simon Cancer Center since 1998. Those gifts mean the Vera Bradley Foundation is the single-largest philanthropic resource for IU's program, the university said.
Among the sunny signature paisley prints in Vera Bradley's Jefferson Pointe store Wednesday, Vera Bradley co-founder Patricia R. Miller said the foundation's board voted unanimously for the gift when its latest pledge had been fulfilled.
"The work is not done," Miller said. "We have all the faith in the world that they're very close to some major discoveries."
The foundation was created in 1998 after Mary Sloan, a friend of Miller and Vera Bradley co-founder Barbara Baekgaard, died of breast cancer.
News of the gift was emotional for Liz Seculoff, a foundation volunteer and breast cancer survivor. It was almost exactly nine years ago that she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Seculoff was 32 at the time. With a history of breast cancer on both sides of her family, Seculoff's 10-year-old daughter, Cassie, will have to have her first mammogram at age 22, Seculoff said.
"I really, really hope, when she gets into her 20s, she does not have to go through what I went through," she said.
Seculoff was one of many volunteers who helped raise money for the foundation this year.
For the second year in a row, the foundation's popular Vera Bradley Classic golf and tennis tournaments saw its proceeds decline, which Executive Director Catherine Hill called a consequence of the recession.
The event raised more than $782,000, compared with more than $1 million in 2008. Even so, Hill said, the foundation had a better year than expected.
In addition to fundraising events, 10 percent of Vera Bradley's net proceeds are donated to the foundation and other breast cancer projects and services, according to the company.
Dr. George W. Sledge Jr., co-director of the breast cancer program at the IU Simon Cancer Center, said the foundation's gifts have allowed the program to make discoveries that translate from the research bench to patients' bedsides.
Among those discoveries, IU is now the only site in the world testing a potential new therapy to force breast cancer cells to grow old and die, he said.
The outpouring of support not just from Vera Bradley, but from northeast Indiana, is something Sledge said he never envisioned 26 years ago when he began working at IU.
"What's very impressive is how the city of Fort Wayne has gotten behind the medical center and our efforts to fight breast cancer," Sledge said.
"I think those of us at the medical center have actually fallen in love with Fort Wayne over the years."
To read Thursday's announcement verbatim, check out The Scoop.
