Eagles Club presents donations for heart, cancer research
Gundersen, Mayo Clinic and UW-Madison accepted checks from the Eagles Club this past Wednesday. The Club distributed the money raised from the 50th Eagles Heart and Cancer Telethon earlier this year. Accepting (and holding) the checks were Dr. Pete Schmeling (UW-Madison), Dr. David DeHart (Mayo Clinic) and Dr. Karen Comden Dahl (Gundersen). (Steve Van Kooten/Courier Press)
By Steve Van Kooten
Each year, the Eagles Club Aerie #1502 in Prairie du Chien proves that everybody’s got a heart, both literally and figuratively.
Tom Stram, one of the cornerstones of the Eagles Heart and Cancer Telethon, announced that the 50th event earlier this year raised $53,000 (up from $37,550 in 2024). He added that the telethon has raised approximately $1.2 million for heart and cancer research over its lifetime.
“That’s the best we’ve ever done, so we were really happy with that,” he said. “That’s crazy to think of.”
This past Wednesday, the Eagles Club presented four checks to Gundersen Health, Mayo Clinic and UW-Madison for cancer and heart research. Gundersen and Mayo Clinic received $13,250 each for cancer and heart research, respectively. UW-Madison received two checks of equal value for their heart and cancer centers.
Dr. Pete Schmeling, representing the Carbone Cancer Center and Cardiovascular Research Center at UW-Madison, said research money has helped UW successfully perform 1,000 heart transplants since 1976 and develop a way to regrow heart muscle with a person’s own stem cells.
“Those are just a few examples of where your gifts are making a difference. This is cutting-edge stuff, and this doesn’t happen out of the blue. It takes things like philanthropic support that you guys are raising,” he said.
UW-Madison is putting research dollars into investigating a condition called arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, a genetic condition in which heart muscle is replaced with scar or fat tissue. The condition increases the risk of fatal heart problems and rhythmic issues. The research effort headed by Dr. Francisco Alvarado is using genetic models to find ways to prevent and treat the disease, according to Schmeling.
Dr. Karen Comden Dahl, Gundersen Health, said philanthropic money is essential for research labs that didn't receive federal funding, even before the latest budget drastically decreased the money available for research.
“The thing we want to do is find better ways of early detection — the earlier you detect cancer, the better their chances of survival,” she said. “Right now, donations are so incredibly important because there’s going to be massive cuts to most cancer research that’s paid for by the federal government.”
The overall cancer survival rate has risen from under 50 percent to over 70 percent, and she credits the generous community efforts like the telethon for helping laboratories find new ways to combat cancer, devise personalized medical treatment and fund different facets of research.
“One of the big things right now is that you’re trying to give people the right medication,” said Dahl. “In the past, for ovarian cancer, all people were given the exact same treatment. But with some kinds of cancer, we can do genetic testing and get something that’s better for them.”
For ovarian cancers, Dahl said treatment strategies haven’t changed much in 30 years, unlike research into lung or prostate cancers.
“There’s always new and cool things they can do with personalized medicine, but ovarian cancer is very aggressive and very deadly because it’s almost always detected very late, when the disease has already spread by the time they’re diagnosed.”
Schmeling added that cancer research is heading toward using people’s own immune systems to fight off emerging cancers.
Currently, UW-Madison’s cancer research is focused on developing immunotherapy drugs that can genetically engineer a person’s immune system to better fight cancer.
Dr. David DeHart, with Mayo Clinic’s location in Prairie du Chien, said that people in the community can see how the money will come back to them with technological advances and better treatment plans.
“We can do tests or EKGs, and that information gets into your chart. Sometimes we’ll get something back from research that says, ‘Hey, this is a person who looks like they might need this additional work done or an additional test’ that before we might not have noticed,” he said. “We’re able to bring the research that’s out there right down here to the local level so that you in the community are benefiting from all the hard work researchers do.”
Stram thanked the community for the support, and Eagles Club President Chad Abram recognized Stram and the Eagles Club members that work behind the scenes each year to make the event happen. The Eagles are already planning the 51st telethon, and they’re aiming to top their new personal best.
