Jill’s House will provide a home away from home for families

By Susan Williams

Peg and Bud Howard are president and chairman, respectively, of the board of directors for a fund-raising effort kicked off last summer to develop Jill’s House, a home for families who come to Bloomington seeking cancer treatment at the IU Cyclotron’s Midwest Proton Radiation Institute.

Because proton therapy is an ongoing procedure with daily treatments spread over the course of one to two months, patients must remain close at hand. Jill’s House will offer patients and their families a supportive, convenient and reasonable place to stay—a home away from home as much as is possible. The facility will be built adjacent to the IU Cyclotron Facility and will be able to house up to 20 families.

The Howards were appointed to spearhead the fund-raising effort after approaching the proton therapy board. They accepted the job willingly because of their own personal experience. One of their sons died 31 years ago after he was diagnosed with bone cancer during his senior year of high school in Indianapolis. For six weeks that year, Peg Howard stayed in New York with him while he received treatment. She left the hospital every night for a lonely hotel room.

Since that time, the Howards have worked with the American Cancer Society, supporting the efforts to establish the Indianapolis Ronald McDonald House and volunteering in the society’s new Hope Lodge, also in Indianapolis.

Jill’s House will be named in honor of IU student Jill Behrman, who disappeared at the age of 19 nearly two years ago. Jill’s father, Eric, director of IU alumni clubs at the IU Alumni Association, sees the house as a thank-you note for all the support he and his wife, Marilyn, a development analyst at the IU Foundation, have received since Jill’s disappearance. “When Peg and Bud approached us with the idea, we were happy to lend Jill’s name to the project and serve on the board. We thought of all the help and concern shown to us and saw this as a way to give back, not only to the people of Bloomington, but also to those across the Midwest who will come here for treatment.”

http://www.indiana.edu/~jshouse/