Dot Timmerman feared the Christmas of 1999 might be her last. Doctors had just discovered a cancerous tumor below her left eye and behind her nose. She was told surgery wasn’t possible; radiation and chemotherapy were her only options. On the Friday after Christmas, Dot and her husband, Wilbert, traveled to St. Louis’s Barnes-Jewish Hospital […]
Shelley Smithson
Shelley Smithson, who has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a staff writer with the Riverfront Times of St. Louis, where this article was first published.
