Grant Named in Honor of Julie Stewart: Cancer Survivor and JVCGC Volunteer  

Julie Stewart accepting award from Nick Valvano at the 2005 Volunteer Party.

Julie Stewart volunteered to work the Jimmy V Celebrity Golf Classic (JVCGC) in its first year in 1994. The director of food services for SAS in Cary, N.C., Stewart was originally drawn to the event because her employer was a founding sponsor. Additionally, her husband Larry was planning to play in the event, which was being held in her own neighborhood. After losing her father to cancer, Stewart jumped at the chance to get involved.

“It’s for a wonderful cause, to find a cure for cancer,” Stewart recalled thinking about the inaugural JVCGC. “I’ve got to volunteer for this.”

She did, serving as a marshal at the hole right behind her house. She enjoyed the event and had the opportunity to visit with friends.

“It just took one year to be involved that I knew I wanted to be more involved,” Stewart said.

In the event’s second year, Stewart put her expertise to work and helped with food and beverages. In 1996, she took over as division manager in special events, which she has been doing ever since.

“It’s such a gratifying experience,” Stewart said. “I’ve made lasting friendships. The people that I work with on the Classic and through The Foundation are like family to me, and they were definitely family to me when I was diagnosed with cancer.”

The cause became even more personal for Stewart when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004.

“The first person I called besides my family when I was deciding what I was going to do with this diagnosis was (JVCGC Executive Director) Frank McCann. He had Dr. Moore on the phone with me within an hour.”

McCann and V Foundation CEO Nick Valvano contacted Dr. Joseph Moore, a member of The V Foundation board of directors and the Scientific Review Committee and an oncologist at Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“I will be forever grateful to Joe Moore,” Stewart said, explaining that he took the time to talk with her about her options and set up meetings with an oncologist at Duke. “My oncologist called me on Good Friday. I was at Duke within a week and had appointments with my oncologist, my surgeon and my radiation oncologist, who all talked with each other. Without those contacts, I don’t know how I would have found that good of care.”

While getting treatment for cancer, Stewart continued to work with as much enthusiasm as ever on the JVCGC.

“It really drives into home why we’re doing this,” she said. “My father died with cancer when I was 17 years old. I was working on this event for a real cause. But it was so much more that year that I was actually going through it.”

Friends asked Stewart, who had surgery in May and started chemotherapy in June, if she intended to take the year off from working the Golf Classic.

“I said, ‘No, if anything this is the year that I’m going to really work on this,” she explained. “I had my last treatment three weeks before the Classic.”

(l to r) Nick Valvano, Dr. Pilar Blancafort, Julie Stewart, and Pam Valvano Strasser at the Volunteer Party where Julie accepted the award for the grant being named in her honor.

With a clean bill of health, Stewart continues to make a difference in the fight against cancer. With funds raised by the JVCGC, a V Scholar grant was awarded in her honor to Dr. Pilar Blancafort at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2005.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that all the work we’ve done and all the money that’s been raised has had an effect,” Stewart said. “Just because you have cancer, doesn’t mean that’s a death sentence. It’s not. What happens to me is not going to be the same as what happened to my father. And there’s no doubt in my mind that that’s because all of the research that is going on.”