PORT TOWNSEND — Two years ago, Renee Depew and her high school friends decided to apply for student exchange programs. All were accepted and offered choices of destinations. Depew’s choice was India.
She didn’t get to go.
Her friends went to Portugal, Africa and Indonesia, but Depew, a Jefferson Community School student, was unable to spend a year abroad due to recurring health problems.
After that, plans to spend part of the past summer working on an organic farm in Italy also fell through because of her health.
Instead, Depew flew to Rochester, Minn., to see doctors at the Mayo Clinic and under go surgery for a brain tumor, followed by weeks of radiation and chemotherapy.
She and her family won’t know if the surgery and post-operative treatments were successful until she returns to the clinic in a few months.
But they do know that the struggle against the tumor’s regrowth will be one that Renee will have to fight for the rest of her life.
To help her family with continuing expenses, Depew’s teachers and family friends have organized a benefit dinner, auction and raffle at the Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend next Sunday.
During the event, Depew — who turned 18 in June and who graduated from Port Townsend High School — will draw the winning ticket for the raffle prize, a hand-carved sandstone Buddha donated by an internationally known Japanese architect and his business partners, who heard about her situation and wanted to help.
“They’ve been very supportive,” said her grandfather, Jim Buckley, of architects Hiro Konosu and Mavis Mallon and Mallon’s husband, Steve Berg.
Architects
Konosu and Mallon’s firm, Lost Art Architecture, is based on Bainbridge Island.
Berg collects antiques and sculpture, and has an export business.
They came to know about Depew through Buckley, who lives in Port Townsend and designs and builds Rumford fireplaces through his business, the Buckley Rumford Co.
Buckley met Konosu after a client saw a Rumford fireplace in an Agate Passage home and ordered one for the house that the architect was designing for him in Takayama, Japan.
Learning that Lost Art had no one who was able to install the fireplace, Buckley volunteered to do it himself in exchange for travel expenses.
Konosu, known for Japanese fusion architecture, traveled with Buckley to Takayama, where he helped install the fireplace, then hosted a ceremonial dinner celebrating the first fire.
“There were no walls, but the fireplace was done,” Buckley said.
That trip three years ago was the foundation of a friendship among Buckley and his spouse, Bonnie Buckley; Konosu and his spouse; and Mallon and Berg.
So when a biopsy last June revealed that the Buckleys’ granddaughter had a grade III brain tumor and was headed to the Mayo Clinic, Berg said, “You’re going to need some money right away.”
No answers, until late
Depew had been in and out of Seattle hospitals for the past year seeking an answer to the question of what was causing her seizures. At one point, doctors told her there was no tumor; at another, that her seizures were psychosomatic.
Deciding to have a biopsy in June, she learned that she had a grade III astrocytoma that was operable — just barely.
“It was very frightening,” Bonnie Buckley said.
Wanting the best medical advice, the family made the decision to take Depew to the Mayo Clinic.
Three days after she was seen at the clinic, surgeons removed a 2.5-centimeter tumor, part of which was growing toward her frontal lobe.
Medical costs were covered by insurance — Depew’s mother, Charlene Buckley, works for Jefferson County Transit as a bus driver. But there will be long-term expenses for monitoring her condition.
“She’ll need MRIs every three months for years,” Jim Buckley said.
To help with expenses and show their support, the architects donated the Buddha, which has been exhibited at Maestrale, an import store on Water Street, and is now in the Buckleys’ yard.
Raffle tickets are $5, and will be available at the benefit, which was the idea of Bob Alei and David Miller, two of Renee’s teachers at Jefferson Community School.
The Buckleys credit Dianne Roberts and Len Goldstein of the Northwest Maritime Center for making the center available for the event, one of the first since it opened in September.
Tim Halpin and the Better Half are providing music.
Steve Berg volunteered to do the catering.
“The food is going to be wonderful,” Bonnie Buckley said.
________
Port Townsend/Jefferson County reporter-columnist Jennifer Jackson can be reached at jjackson@olypen.com.
