About a year and a half ago I began the process of getting Reel Recovery to come to Montana. We finally made it happen. Here's an article all about what happened, and why it's important. I would give you the direct link, but... The Bozeman Daily Chronicle password protects it's content after 1 day, so I got permission to post it here instead.

If you would like to get in touch with Reel Recovery directly, you can reach them here:
http://www.ReelRecovery.org

Best,

Scott T. Smith
The onFlyFishing Directory
http://www.onFlyFishing.com


'Men with cancer recover with rods, reels'

By KARIN RONNOW, Bozeman Daily Chronicle Staff Writer

EMIGRANT - The fly-fishing vests look ordinary at first glance.

But the anglers who wear them quickly find that these vests connect them with other men who share a common journey.

"Look at this," said Roger McClure, handing his fishing buddy his rod and shrugging off his vest.

The vest McClure wore during the Reel Recovery retreat last week had been signed by anglers from all walks of life. All of them had cancer, and all had faced their own mortality.

"I'm wearing a piece of history," said McClure, a 67-year-old Whitehall resident who has pancreatic cancer. “All of these guys either fought the battle and won - or didn't."

McClure was standing on the banks of the Yellowstone River, where he had been fishing with Sam Pharis, a rancher who volunteered two days to Reel Recovery, a nonprofit group that organizes fly-fishing retreats for men with cancer.

The vests are a Reel Recovery staple, imbued with the strength and courage of those who wore them before.

When McClure signed up for the retreat, he was ambivalent, he said. Like many men, he was stoic about his disease, a victim of "plain old testosterone, that male hormone."

But the retreat transformed his outlook.

"Look at that river," he said, pointing to the Yellowstone. "Now look at it again. It's not the same river, is it? It's changing all the time."

He and the other men were changing, too, he said.

Most of these men had been reluctant to seek help navigating the radical changes a cancer diagnosis brings, said Stan Golub, Reel Recovery's executive director.

"A lot of men are walking through life asleep," Golub said. “But cancer can be a wake-up call if you want it to be."

Upstream around a bend, Ken Jacobs and his fishing buddy Harvey Harris, both of Bozeman, stood knee-deep in the Yellowstone.

Jacobs, 70, has lymphoma and acknowledged he was a "little clumsy and I tire easily." But the time on the river and the conversations he'd had with others at the retreat had been inspiring, he said. "There's a lot of camaraderie and in-depth understanding about what other people are going through."

Over the course of two and a half days, the men - some of them for the first time - had been able to talk about the disease, their journey and their mortality, Jacobs said.

"We have all different levels of cancer," said Jacobs, a retired teacher, coach and ranch broker. "Some are more deadly than the others. Some are more likely to come back than the others."

It sounds grim, and some of it was. But a lot of it wasn't.

"I've heard more laughter, more jokes out of this group," Jacobs said. "You'd think it would be a somber group. But everybody has a sense of humor."

GENESIS OF REEL RECOVERY

The 12 participants came from all over Montana. Their cancers ran the gamut - leukemia, brain, prostate, lung and pancreatic, all at various stages. They ranged in age from 43 to 79.

"Cancer doesn't care who you are," McClure said.

Their ability to be here together is a result of Stewart Brown, a Colorado man who had brain cancer. He was also a fly fisherman. Once, when his cancer was in remission, he and two friends, Coy Theobalt and Jim Cloud, went fishing.

The three friends started talking about how therapeutic fly fishing can be, its meditative qualities and its link to the natural world.

They also talked about how powerful it could be for men to feel comfortable talking about their lives and their fears with other men. Brown's experience had shown them why that was particularly important for men with cancer. “We have a culture that has no sacred rite of initiation into adulthood," Theobalt, a psychotherapist, said as he sat on the porch at Dome Mountain Ranch last week. “As a result, we have 50-year-old men who never transitioned to adulthood. So when a man gets cancer, it's a crisis. It's an opportunity to look at this stuff. Cancer is a great educator."

Thus, Reel Recovery was born. The trio founded a nonprofit organization, hired Golub and tested the idea. That first retreat was in Colorado, with four guys who had brain cancer, Theobalt said. It was a wild few days, but the results were better than anyone expected.

From the get-go, Theobalt was in charge of the retreats' "compassionate conversations," which he conceived as group sessions that are comfortable and nonthreatening, but honest.

"Men don't like to be caught off guard with an emotional response,” he said. “So the way I view my role is to create a place where the men feel safe enough to tell their stories. Many of these men have never told their stories to anyone. They are strong, silent, dying men."

After that first retreat, when the three were convinced the concept was sound, they began to look for money. Brown wrote to Lance Armstrong, seeking a grant from his foundation.

Armstrong wrote back within a week and then came to visit. By that time, Brown's cancer had returned. He was dying. But he was determined. At the end of a half-hour meeting "Lance turned to his foundation director and said, 'We've got to help these guys,'" Golub recalled.

That first grant was the startup money Reel Recovery needed.

"Stuart passed away a week later," Theobalt said. "But it was his dream. He left this legacy. And it's taken off from there."

This year, Reel Recovery will hold 12 retreats in 10 states - all of them free to participants.

"Anyone who's ever had cancer has a free ticket," Theobalt said.

RETREAT FUNDAMENTALS

Key to the operation are the "fishing buddies," local expert anglers who provide one-on-one instruction and guidance in the river, but who also listen.

Mark Peterson, of Bozeman, said he heard about Reel Recovery at a Trout Unlimited meeting and applied the next day to help.

“If there's something I love that much, that is that much fun and I can use to help someone else - that's very cool,” Peterson said. “People don't look at fly fishing as a means for therapy. And I don't have experience with cancer. But the conversations they've been having (with Theobalt) free them up.

“We wound up talking about almost everything,” he said.

In addition to making new friends, Golub said, the retreat participants learn fly-fishing skills and gain confidence on the river.

For Dave Espeland, 72, the retreat was not the first time he had held a fly rod.

"I was a fly fisherman before, but one with no technique," Espeland, a former Billings teacher and school administrator, said as he waded out of the Yellowstone on Thursday. "These guys have shown me how to read the water, how to present a fly - although I still haven't solved getting tangled up in the line."

Espeland, who has prostate cancer, attended the retreat at the urging of his daughter, who works at the Center for Cancer Support in Bozeman.

"She said, ‘Dad, you gotta go,'” he said. “She was right.

"Probably the most important thing I've learned is I'm not the only one who's got cancer. That, and there are deep, spiritual people here, and perhaps I need to take note of that. For us strong he-men, we aren't used to that sort of thing, really."

This was Reel Recovery's first Montana event, and Theobalt and Golub said they were thrilled with the community response - from the fly fishermen who donated hundreds of flies, to the cancer center that got the word out, to the “amazing” accommodations at Dome Mountain Ranch.

"Without much effort on our part, we had participants, volunteers, supplies and we just showed up," Golub said. "The support from the Montana fly-fishing and health-care community has been great.”

And for some of the men, particularly the six who are from the Bozeman area, it's not over.

“What will gravitate out of this is a group that gets together on a regular basis,” Jacobs said. “It's important for us to do that."

Jacobs and McClure also discovered that they own condos not far from each other on Lake Mead in Nevada.

"We've already got another fishing trip planned," Jacobs said.