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Dinner for Don: Funds will support ailing Valley weatherman
AUSTINTOWN
The man in the easy chair frowning over his smartphone, oblivious to the conversation going on in his living room, is well-known in the Mahoning Valley.
His familiar face is thinner now, but along with his voice, it’s unmistakable.
Suddenly, Don Guthrie looks up with an announcement.
“They put a tornado watch up for western Ohio,” he said, telling us to be on guard for later.
He’s not giving weather forecasts on WKBN TV 27 anymore, having been diagnosed in the spring with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. But he’s not giving up on forecasting completely, either, even if it’s only for an audience of three — his wife, Debbie, and a Vindicator writer and photographer.
His tumor is inoperable. Guthrie, 71, had it treated with radiation and chemotherapy, and he’s not giving up on himself, either.
“You have to stay focused on not going to the dark side,” he said. “I did once.”
“It just all hit him,” Debbie said about what was a very difficult night. “You go through stages of denial. The anger.”
No one wants to die, she said.
These days though, there are bright spots. Guthrie is happy that he gained 3.2 pounds and now weighs 126.
“I started this journey at 170 pounds,” he said.
His back isn’t hurting right now. Acupuncture seems to be helping.
The cancer has not spread to other parts of his body.
“Everything seems to be going in the right direction,” said Debbie.
And even though the prognosis for stage 4 pancreatic cancer is not good, Guthrie has hope for his future, that he’ll be one of the long-lived survivors.
“Some people with my stage have lived five, six, seven years,” he said Wednesday at his Austintown home as he looked back on how his life changed since December — when he began having back and stomach pains that tests would not reveal as cancer until he finally had a PET scan and was diagnosed in April.
Debbie, who is a nurse, suspected those symptoms could mean pancreatic cancer. But it wasn’t until Don began losing weight that he was able to get the PET scan that confirmed it.
Don also wants to build a legacy, and he wants to say thank you to a community that never fails to surprise him with overwhelming support.
A benefit spaghetti dinner will take place Saturday at the Italian Fraternal Home in Girard. Part of the money will go to him and Debbie for expenses not covered by insurance. Part of it will go to an organization called the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. Most of it, however, will go to Youngstown State University Foundation for a scholarship for a communications major.
He and Debbie are hoping the dinner will raise enough money so it can be invested, and the scholarship can be perpetual.
It’s a way to honor Guthrie’s distinguished career. He began working at WKBN Radio in 1970 after he was a disc jockey at several smaller stations in New Castle, Pa., Virginia and West Virginia. He began doing the weather there six months after he started when the weatherman didn’t come to work one day, and continued to do it on the noon news until 1980, when he went to full-time weather on TV.
He went to Mississippi State University in 1993 to become an accredited meteorologist, and he has seals of approval from the National Weather Association and the American Meteorological Society. It was unusual to earn two, he and Debbie explained.
The scholarship is also a way for them to say their thank-you’s to the community.
Don’s learned through his ordeal, he said, that the people who live in the Valley are capable of great love and caring.
“I have a lady from Salem who sends me a card almost every day,” he said.
“People send him letters telling him they had cancer, don’t give up,” said Debbie. “People bring food over. Some neighbor sent $100 anonymously.”
They see signs on telephone poles: “Say a Prayer for Don Guthrie.”
“People love him — he’s the consummate professional,” said Debbie. “They say, ‘You calmed us when the tornado came through’ .... ‘We could always count on you being there.’”
“I knew he was loved,” she continued. “But I don’t think he realized how much.”