Friends gather to honor late West End cancer victim

It was just the kind of get-together that Jeanne Gambino would have loved, with music, motorcycles and good friends at the American Legion in Gilbert.

Jammin’ for Jeanne, an event brought together by friends of Gambino, was originally intended to be a fundraiser to help alleviate the cost of treatment for her glioblastoma multiforme. Unfortunately, on Monday, Gambino passed away, transforming the event into a memorial, though the gathering of close friends helped provide some solace.

“It happened so fast. She was supposed to be here. Unfortunately, it’s not like that today,” Jeanne’s husband Jack said.

“These are the greatest people on the planet, with all the support they’ve shown to me.”

It all began when Jeanne started showing some peculiar symptoms just after the holidays, Jack said. She was forgetting names of people she knew, her handwriting degraded, headaches were frequent and she felt weak in her right side. After a trip to the emergency room, Jack was given the worst news.

“I brought her to the emergency room, and they said, ‘Oh Jack, by the way, she has a brain tumor, 6 c.m. on the left side of her front lobe.’ So, we transferred her to St. Luke’s, because they can handle neurosurgery down there. We got her into surgery, they told me they got it,” Gambino said.

The diagnosis, glioblastoma multiforme, was concerning, A stage 4 tumor, it is considered one of the most aggressive and infiltrative brain cancers.

Gambino said that due to a lack of benefits, Jeanne was sent home on Feb, 6.

After Gambino had left the hospital, her friends at the Legion got word of her plight.

“It just kind of hit home. She was a good person, everybody liked her. She was the regular Sunday bartender here,” family friend George Commerford said.

“Her husband is a member of the Legion Riders, and the Sons of the American Legion, which I am, too. He was telling us the medical bills from St. Luke’s were coming into the tens of thousands of dollars.”

The Legion members, Legion Riders, Auxiliary members and other groups came together with help from Commerford and his wife, Casey, to put on a benefit, Jammin’ for Jeanne. A Poker Run would be the big event, with proceeds going to cover Gambino’s medical bills.

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“They went to Keystone Harley, Slopeside Pub, Maggie’s over in Saylorsburg, then they’re going to Old Mill Pub, and then they’ll be back here,” Commerford said on Saturday.

“That was for the biker guys. But there were also a lot of regular customers here that knew Jeanne, that have nothing to do with motorcycles. I wanted to do the benefit end, they wanted to do the motorcycle end. The more, the merrier, you know?”

Commerford helped assemble the rest of the festivities at the American Legion, including a Tricky Tray, a 50/50 ticket sale, a pig roast and a cookout.

After Jack took Jeanne home, he focused on rehabilitating her. She seemed to be in relatively good health. Jack was able to return to work, but shortly thereafter, Jeanne’s condition took a turn for the worse.

Chemotherapy was an option, but with all things considered, it wasn’t the path that Jeanne wanted to take.

“She opted out of the chemotherapy, because she wanted to live life with quality, not quantity. She had really long hair, and she didn’t want to lose everything, all the beauty, with chemotherapy,” he said, looking through photos of Jeanne on his phone with a smile.

Glioblastoma multiforme attacks rapidly, and has a tendency to return even after initial treatments. Survival rates are often limited to around a year after the initial diagnosis, and in Jeanne’s case, it was far sooner.

“She died on May 7. To watch that happen to someone you love ...,” Jack said, tears welling up in his voice.

Less than a week had passed since Jack lost his wife, and the heartache was especially fresh, but he found comfort in the gathering on Saturday.

“We’re all a big family here, I’ve been part of the Legion for many years. Jeanne was member, a Riders member and she worked here. I feel really good about it,” he said.

As the bikers rolled into their last stop, friends of the Gambinos shared fond memories of Jeanne, and offered condolences and support to Jack.

“She was a wonderful, wonderful person, a beautiful person. She always had a smile on her face, she was so bubbly. You’d come in, she knew you by name, and she knew exactly what you wanted. She was a wonderful human being, and I’ll always hold her in my heart,” Auxiliary Vice President Eileen McGuire said.