This past October, Fenwick Home Services was proud to support Breast Cancer Awareness month. We were honored and gratful that all of our customers joined us to help raise.
We did this for anyone who is fighting or survived breast cancer, who knows someone who is fighting or survived breast cancer, and for us at Bill Fenwick Plimbing, we did it for our long time friend and employee Cathy Duckworth. Read Cathy’s touching story:
Almost twenty years ago, I found myself a single mother and unemployed. I had taken a seasonal position with the I.R.S. and, one afternoon, I was driving down Beach Blvd. on the way to pick up my son, Andrew, from daycare when I saw a sign that said “Dispatcher Wanted.” The company was Fenwick Home Services.
“Hmm,” I thought. Growing up my father had owned a new construction plumbing company, so plumbing experience I had, but dispatcher…not so much.
I decided the next day on my way home I would stop in and apply for the position and I did.
Now if anyone is familiar with plumbing then you know new construction and repair plumbing are worlds apart, however my interviews with Bill Fenwick Jr. went well and I was hired!
It was touch and go in the beginning because of the work being done, and it could be intimidating at times. After all, I was in charge of seven trucks: where they were sent and what jobs they were to do. But I persevered.
Fenwick Home Services is the last of the Mom and Pop businesses. One of the best parts is that several employees have had sons who worked at Bill Fenwick, my son, Andrew included.
I’ve been so blessed to find a job I’ve enjoyed so much and these people became my close friends and I consider them my family.
Then in February 2010, I was diagnosed with Stage 3 Breast Cancer. I think most people shut down the exact minute they hear the word cancer and only retain the instructions for the very next plan of action. We started with chemotherapy then surgery to remove the breast and twenty-nine lymph nodes, nineteen of which were infected. Everything was successful and I returned to work full time in March 2012.
However, in November of that same year the cancer metastasized to the liver and the bone: another round of chemo and radiation.
During my last hospital stay I was in the I.C.U. and they called in the hospital chaplain to talk to me; while he was on my left side counseling me on moving on to the next life, I could hear the head nurse talking to my brother about moving me to hospice. “It was time.” It was then and there I said to myself, “I will not go to hospice. I am going to live and beat this disease, I will not die”
I am still on chemo and will be for a while, but this chemo drug seems to be working and I am feeling much better.
These are the times when you find out who your real friends are outside of your immediate family. I know that Bill Jr., his wife Dee Dee, and his children Brooke and Trey had my back with their support and, most importantly, their prayers. These are the kind of people you call your family and are proud to be employed by.
When they told me they were collecting donations for me for the Susan G. Komen Foundation I was more than touched. A lot of new employees are not yet part of the Fenwick Home Services family and I don’t know all of them as well as I once knew the original seven techs (we now have twenty trucks), but to think they all cared enough about me to seek donations for a foundation that will one day have a cure for my disease… words cannot explain my feelings.
To say “Thank You” doesn’t express the heartfelt gratitude I have for the Fenwick family and Fenwick Employees.
To say “Thank You” to the Susan G. Komen Foundation isn’t enough for the endless research they are doing, and, with God’s help, a cure is on the way.
But I will say “Thank You” over and over because that is all I can say to even try and express how full my heart is with gratefulness.
Thank you,
Cathy