---
wednesday,may5,2004
news
the university daily kansan
9A
World walker to return home after five years
The Associated Press
EMPORIA — After five years of walking, 26 pairs of shoes and a lifetime of experience, Polly Letofsky is almost home.
"I think of it as sort of a postgraduate education," said Letofsky, who has been walking around the world since 1999 to raise awareness for breast cancer.
"There's no way that anyone college-educated for six years has more knowledge about the world than I do history, linguistics, economics."
Graduation day is coming soon. Barring disaster, Letofsky will return home to Vail, Colo., on Aug. 1, exactly five years after she started.
sauried.
She reached Emporia last month and she was well ahead of schedule, so she's been able to dawdle a bit.
But the end of the road is coming. And she's starting to look forward to it.
"I'll miss that adventure."
Letofsky said. "But I'm also excited to stop, get a job and a paycheck, and know I'm going home every night."
Letofsky has wanted to walk around the world since she was 12, when she read a story about a similar globetrotter in the 1920s.
The push to turn the dream into a reality came 25 years later.
More women she knew were getting breast cancer and Letofsky, 41, saw a chance to help a little.
"I don't pretend to be changing the world. But sometimes it's the first time they've heard about it, or the fifth,or the eighth or the 10th That's why we have to keep it in the forefront."
Polly Letofsky World walker for breast cancer
So she walked.
And talked.
And united Depending on the country, shell sometimes raise funds as well, but raising attention is a higher priority.
"I don't pretend to be charging the world," Letofsky said. "But sometimes it's the first time they've heard about it, or the fifth, or the eighth or the 10th. That's why we have to keep it in the forefront."
Some travelers might have chosen to head east and stay in the United States as long as possible before going international.
But Letofsky decided to go west, to get the difficult Mojave Desert out of the way right at the start.
It also meant she could spend much of the early journey in English-speaking countries, because she would be leaving Los Angeles for New Zealand and Australia (by airplane).
At each town, the local Lions would get her to a pub to spread her message.
That decision also got her virtually adopted by the Lions Club in Australia.
"They'd introduce me to everyone at the pub and say 'Give her two minutes!'" she remembered. "We'd pass the hat around, raise $300 and send it all to the Breast Cancer Network."
The message has often had to be tailored to fit cultural norms. In the United States, it's no big deal to suggest touching yourself for a breast exam, but Malaysia was another story.
There, Letofsky made her greatest headway talking to Malaysian men.
"The men have to advocate this (there) and be aware that if you catch it early, there's a 97 percent success rate," she said.
"In many of these area, the women are there to serve the family, and they wouldn't go to a doctor for help. The men were so tired of seeing their wives die prematurely, and they were the ones to get on the bandwagon."
One thing Letofsky stresses is that there's no checklist that can say 'I'll never get breast cancer.'
Eighty percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer, she said, have no known risk factors.
It's not always been a smooth journey.
journey. She skipped the Middle East entirely, on the advice of the State Department, because of political worries.
And she set a 25-mile-a-day pace getting through India, where she met with one frustration after another.
She's walked through forest fires, lightning storms, 110-degree heat and even a 7.2 Richter scale earthquake in California.
another:
Part of the problem was avoiding any food that had been washed in the river water:
washed in the water "I survived on oranges, bananas and hard-boiled eggs," she said.
But the rest of it was cultural
"You don't understand the whys or hows of anything," Letofsky said. "You can't depend on anything. For example, it says in the guidebook, if you ask someone a question and they don't know the answer, they'll lie to you. It's an incredible gamble as you decide whether to believe someone at all, which means you can't believe anyone."
Letofsky had been looking for ward to the continent for much of the trip, finally arriving in Greece in July 2002.
beneath anyone Europe was also something of a letdown.
in July 2002. That's when she found that many of the countries were experiencing an influx of Eastern European Gypsies.
Pulling her baggage trolley behind her, Letofsky was mistaken for one of them and virtually shunned.
She was too old for the youth hostels, and the bed-and-breakfasts wouldn't take a one-night stay.
The campgrounds wouldn't let her pay for a spot.
stay.
"It was impossible to find a place to stay." Letofsky said. "A lot of times, I had to find a cornfield and pitch a tent."
That's been atypical, though.
help
She's even ended up sending
34 boxes of stuff home, from folks
she's met along the way.
She's never thought about turning back or giving up. And it's never been dull.
A tongue-in-cheek list kept by Letofsky notes that she has been interviewed 780 times, taken 15,000 photos, been stopped by police 46 times and received 12 marriage proposals (none accepted).
That doesn't count the more unique moments, such as being in Malaysia on Sept. 11, 2001.
Because it happened late at night by the local time zone, Letofsky heard most of the details on the TV.
Every village, she noted seemed to have a television tuned to CNN, with a crowd of people watching.
Soon enough, she'll be going home with a lot of memories and a lot of assurance.
a lot of assurance.
After five years of globetrot
ting, little fazes her.
"It's one of those confidence-building things," she said. "You know no matter how big the hurdle is, you need to sit down, have a cappuccino, make a plan from A to B and start preparing."
Art exhibit commemorates Brown v. Board
The Associated Press
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A new exhibit at Arkansas' seat of justice commemorates the 50th anniversary of the landmark decision that struck down the doctrine of separate-but-equal public schools.
A godson of the lead lawyer in the first phase of the Brown vs. Board of Education case displayed original artwork and offered a presentation yesterday. Carey Wynn's The Lynching of Justice and 54 are part of an exhibition on the decision that is on display at the Arkansas Justice Building.
The exhibit will be up through
"The anniversary of that opinion was sort of a natural thing to focus on."
J.D. Gingerich
Director of the Administrative Office of the
Courts
mid-July, focusing on the original trial lawyers — John Scott and his three sons of Topeka.
The exhibit commemorates the 50th anniversary of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared racial segregation in public education unconstitutional.
"The anniversary of that opinion was sort of a natural thing to focus on," said J.D. Gingerich, director of the Administrative Office of the Courts.
Office of the Court Some of the photographs displayed were gathered by the Arkansas Supreme Court Historical Society for a conference last year on racial justice. Other materials specific to the Brown case were gathered off of the Internet, Gingerich said.
Wynn, an academician and artist from Pine Bluff, is the godson of John Scott, whose firm developed the case challenging the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson decision that had set out the separatebut-equal doctrine.
The Brown case was originally
filed in 1951 on behalf of the parents of Linda Brown, of Topeka, and other black students who were recruited by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to challenge the city's assignment of children to elementary schools based on race.
Brown vs. Board was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1952 as a combination of five cases representing nearly 200 hundred plaintiffs from Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
On May 17,1954,the nation's highest court ruled unanimously that separate educational facilities were inherently
unequal and deprived minority children of equal educational opportunities.
opportunity. The nation's first major test of the ruling came three years later in Arkansas when then President Dwight D. Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to enforce a federal desegregation order after Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called out the state's National Guard to bar nine black children from entering all-white Central High School.
Wynn said his godfather's early work on the Brown case landed him a job as assistant solicitor general in the Eisenhower administration, where he served as one of the president's advisers during the Central High crisis.
The Associated Press
Same-sex marriage ban fails
TOPEKA — A proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage failed yesterday to win enough House support to submit it to voters.
submit to the vote The vote was 79-45 — five favorable votes fewer than the two-thirds majority needed to approve a proposed change in the Kansas Constitution. The Senate adopted the proposal Saturday on a 27-13 vote.
possibility. The proposal would have added a statement to the Kansas Constitution that Kansas recognizes marriage only between one man and one woman. It also would have denied legal benefits associated with marriage to other domestic arrangements, such as civil unions.
"I would say it's dead," House Speaker Doug Mays, (R-Topeka) said following the vote.
In March, the House adopted a different version of the amendment on an 88-36 vote, but several members switched their votes yesterday.
The proposed amendment, which would have gone to a statewide vote in November, stated:
"The marriage contract is to be considered in law as a civil contract. Marriage shall be constituted by one man and one woman only. All other marriages are declared to be contrary to the public policy of this state and are void.
"No relationship other than a marriage shall be recognized by the state as entailing the parties to the rights or incidents of marriage."
Kansas already has a statute declaring the state's policy of recognizing marriage only as the union of one man and one woman.
Some legislators believe the statute makes the amendment unnecessary, but others say putting the policy into the Kansas Constitution would keep it from being revised by a court or future Legislature.
Proponents also said the state should continue to elevate traditional marriages above other relationships, arguing that traditional marriages form the strongest families and the foundation of American society.
"We either care about marriage or we don't," said Rep. Dan Williams (R-Olathe), who presented the proposed amendment to the House. "It's that simple."
Paramount Pictures
Stop by THE KANSAN on the west end of Stauffer-Flint and pick up a complimentary pass.
PLAY IT AGAIN
SPORTS
INVITE YOU AND A GUEST TO A SPECIAL ADVANCE SCREENING!
featuring Seth Green, Dax from "Punk'd", and Matthew Lillard
South Wind 12
Thursday May 6
3433 Iowa
Lawrence, KS
7:30 p.m.
We Buy, Sell & Trade USED & NEW Sports Equipment
APPLE KANE PLACE
- Studios Available Now!
- On KU Bus Route
- Now On-site Management
- Laundry Facility
- Small Pets Welcome
Near 15th & Kasold call for details 830-8121
LAWRENCE
AUTOMOTIVE
DIAGNOSTICS
INC.
842-8665
2888 Four Wheel Dr.
www.lawrenceautodilag.com
LIBERTY HALL 644 faces
740-1912
TOUCHING THE VOID (pkt)
4:30 ONLY
ETERNAL SUNSHINE... (R)
7:10 ONLY
841-PLAY
1029 Massachusetts
THE DREAMERS (NC17)
0:30 ONLY
Today's times only · Student: $4.60
A great looking resume could mean the difference between
"We'll get back to you"
&
Don't be that girl. Let Printing Services assist you with all your job-hunting needs.
"Welcome aboard."