Young’s loss fuels fight against disease

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Attorney becomes first male president of breast cancer organization

Attorney Mark Young lost his wife to inflammatory breast cancer, but that experience helped him find an organization through which he honors her memory.

“What I’m trying to accomplish is the fulfillment of our mission to make one-to-one mentoring a national care standard,” said Young, who recently was named the first male president of Wisconsin-based After Breast Cancer Diagnosis’ board of directors.

ABCD offers free, confidential mentoring to breast cancer patients and their families. Young was first introduced to ABCD in 1999, when his bride of four months, Erica Eaton, was diagnosed with the rare, aggressive form of the disease.

Eaton, who was 40 at the time, was referred to the emerging organization, which had been founded in 1998 by Milwaukee television news anchor Melodie Wilson, Young said.

“Melodie had been diagnosed in 1992 and found there really wasn’t a resource for people to talk to other people, directly, who had experience with the illness,” said Young, of Habush Habush & Rottier SC in Milwaukee.

Eaton thought she had beaten the disease, Young said, and she became the group’s first mentor with inflammatory breast cancer.

But it returned and had metastasized, with doctors finding a tumor near her heart, he said. She died in 2005.

Young said he knew Eaton would have wanted him to continue supporting ABCD, and he stepped up his involvement in 2008 by joining the board he now leads.

ABCD’s focus, Young said, is “survivorship,” or helping women and the small percentage of men who are diagnosed with breast cancer to live with it. Studies have shown that mentoring helps reduce the patient’s sense of isolation and increases compliance with treatment, he said.

Initially, ABCD served just the Milwaukee area, but eventually expanded its reach statewide. Then, in 2012, Y-Me, a Chicago-based nonprofit group that offered a national help line for breast cancer patients, closed. ABCD acquired Y-Me and now is serving callers nationwide.

Beyond expanding the hotline’s availability, the board raises money for the group and builds relationships with health care providers nationwide to raise awareness about ABCD’s services, Young said.

And as Young’s involvement on the board has grown so has the importance of striking a balance with his full-time job. He soon will commemorate 37 years practicing law.

“This, of course, is personal to me and my family, and everyone else who was affected, to carry on Erika’s involvement,” he said. “Our firm believes in helping people and the community, so this fits in well with that ethic.”

The balance is easier to attain, Young said, because of the similarities between his role on the board and his job with the firm.

“There’s a natural vector from doing personal injury work and trying to help people who have problems,” he said. “I think by virtue of the efforts I’ve engaged in, in supporting and working with ABCD, it reflects back on my work as a personal injury attorney, thinking about the problems and troubles that people go through and trying to help them under very, very difficult circumstances.”