More than ever, the fight against women’s heart disease, is gaining momentum, including in the First State. This year, students at four local schools have pitched in, lending their artistic and horticultural gifts to the cause.
Those talents will be the literal centerpiece of the annual Go Red For Women luncheon and fashion show, scheduled for Friday, Feb. 5, at the Sheraton Dover.
Each table at the luncheon will feature a clay flowerpot decorated by students from Holy Cross Elementary School, Lake Forest Central Elementary School and Nellie F. Stokes Elementary School.
Students at Polytech High School will provide the live flowers for each pot, said Anne Nutter, an administrator at the school and chairwoman for centerpieces for the show.
“These are something attractive on the tables, things that we want people to purchase,” Nutter said of the decorated pots. “They’re cute. We hope people buy them and take them home as a reminder of Go Red Day.”
Holy Cross art teacher Sharon Benini recognized the chance for a progressive project to which each of the 100 students in her classes could contribute.
“If you explain to them what it’s all about, they really take to it and do their very best,” Benini said of her pupils. “It was awesome.
“I think they understood it was beyond just creating a centerpiece,” she added, noting each student signed his or her name on the bottom of their creations as a mark of their commitment and of taking responsibility for their work.
Nutter is expecting some lively bidding for the artwork-embellished planters, with all of the money collected going toward heart disease research.
Heart ailments are a primary factors in disease-caused deaths in women, Nutter said, adding symptoms women suffer often differ drastically from what men may experience.
She knows from personal experience.
“Six years ago, I was feeling tired, nothing special,” she revealed. “I went in for a routine physical and they put me on a treadmill for a stress test. Within an hour I was in an ambulance being taken to the hospital.”
“The next morning they prepped me for emergency surgery and inserted a pacemaker because my heart was shutting down,” Nutter said.
There were no flashes of pain in her chest, no tingling in the arms, none of the usual signs of a heart attack, she said.
“If I had been home that night, I would not have made it to the next morning,” Nutter said. “I’d had no warning. I was just feeling a little tired.”
