The Chuck
Snook Story

Living to tell his story: Prostate cancer a silent killer

2/2/97

Chuck Snook has prostate cancer and probably will not live through the year.

When he learned of his illness, in 1994, he began keeping a journal, about his disease, his pain, his life, his approaching death and his state of mind.

A person can survive a fatal illness psychologically, he believes, and that's what he wants people to know.

"I have learned that attitude is everything," he writes in the journal he began keeping when he first learned of his cancer.

"One Man's Approach to Terminal Illness," he calls it, and he concludes his introduction thusly: "I hope that I have prepared myself for my greatest adventure--the knowledge that my life is coming to an end.

The following is the first chapter in the adventure Chuck Snook is sharing with his friends and family, colleagues and strangers.

The GOP was still celebrating its takeover of the House and Senate, rapper Tupac Shakur was still alive and on trial in New York City on sodomy and sex abuse charges, and in Central Illinois the autumn was still warm and sunny on Nov. 19, 1994, the day Chuck Snook learned how he would die, and probably when.

He had prostate cancer and more than likely it would take him within three years.

Sitting in the Bloomington office of Dr. Thomas Kulb, Chuck and his wife, Eva, heard the news: The cancer could be slowed, but it could not be stopped. It had spread from Chuck's prostate to his spine, his ribs, throughout his pelvic area. Metastasized was the medical term.

"You don't really believe it at first," said Eva. Then, "it is devastating."

"As Eva and I left the doctor's office," Chuck wrote in the journal he soon began keeping, "I felt good. I knew what my condition was, what my chances were and that I no longer had to deal with the unknown. The rest of the afternoon we went to lunch, went shopping and then returned home. I had a school board meeting that evening."

Chuck is principal of Flanagan High School. He loves the job, and he had no intention of letting cancer, even terminal cancer, spoil it for him.

When Charles Emerson Snook was born Jan. 31, 1938, in a Fort Dodge, Iowa, hospital, he immediately faced his first challenge. Penicillin had not yet been invented and a wave of streptococcus swept through the obstetrics ward, killing all of the babies but two.

"In a way," he said, long after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, "I feel like I've been living on borrowed time for 59 years."

But that was only the beginning.

His parents divorced a year later. He and his older sister, Jill, stayed with their mother, first in Colorado Springs, then in Los Angeles where, he says, he was literally growing up a delinquent on the streets, until his grandmother, Lena Snook, and his aunt, Charlotte Snook, rescued him at the age of 10 and brought him back to Fort Dodge.

"It was a life-saving experience for me," he said. "That's for sure."

From then on he had little contact with his mother and not much more with his father. His grandmother and his aunt were his parents.

As an 11-year-old he lost the sight in his left eye to a firecracker, and a year or two after that, he had a baseball-size tumor removed from his chest. "But since then, I'm as healthy as a horse."

Chuck's Aunt Charlotte was a teacher, and from her he inherited "the bug." He graduated from the University of Dubuque, with a bachelor of arts degree in English, in 1961.

He and Eva Kay Rutledge, his college sweetheart since their freshman year, were married Aug. 12,1961. Both took jobs at Port Byron, Ill. Chuck was an English teacher and wrestling coach at Riverdale High School. Eva taught third grade for a year, "before we had babies," she said.

The family grew to five with Anne Marie and Jeanne and Sean (all graduated from college now, married, living on their own and doing well in the world). "We've been in the grandpa and gramma mode for about 11 years," said Chuck.

After teaching at New Lenox for awhile, Chuck returned to Riverdale, then moved to Prophetstown where, in 1969, he met Ray Zimmerman, a first-year teacher fresh out of Illinois State University. The two became fast friends.

Ray taught vocational agriculture at Prophetstown for seven years, then he came home to Flanagan, he said, "to farm with my dad."

He had just become president of the Flanagan Board of Education in 1991, when high school principal Dave Messersmith resigned and then-Supt. Bill Braksick began the search for a new one. Maybe it was more than just a principal he was seeking. Bill was thinking about retirement: "I was shopping around for my replacement, really," he said.

Chuck had earned his master's degree from St. Mary's College in Winona, Minn., in 1973, and doctorate in education administration from the University of Iowa 10 years later. He was principal at Milledgeville from 1983 to 1986, then Stockton; and he was looking to relocate again in 1991.

Bill said he narrowed the field to three, and Chuck was his first choice. Then he did something he had never done: He gave the three applications to a committee of teachers and one of the students to see who they would choose.

"I just stayed out of it," said Board President Zimmerman.

The teachers and students, independently, chose Chuck.

The board agreed. The search was over. Chuck was hired. No physical examination was required.

Prostate cancer is a very slow acting disease and Chuck thinks he probably had it when he came to Flanagan, when it was in an early, treatable stage. But he doesn't dwell on what's past. "To what end? he asks.

The job seemed to be one of those marriages made in heaven. "It's really neat when you're in a situation and you and the superintendent think alike, said Chuck.

He and Eva rented a farm house south of town. He moved into his office overlooking Illinois 116 that runs through town, and set about meeting his colleagues and making new friends.

That didn't seem difficult. He's a social kind of guy.

"I love to throw dinner parties," he said. "I do the cooking and my wife has been tolerant of it. When you're around people you want to be around, hell, the food tastes better, the drinks taste better...

Nicki Rosenbaum said she liked him right off. She was the new assistant superintendent of education in Livingston County (now merged with the McLean-DeWitt office in Bloomington) when Chuck was named at Flanagan, and she got acquainted with him at one of their first meetings of county principals.

"When I saw the way he was with kids, I knew I liked him," she said. "He understands that there is so much baggage that a kid brings to school because of what's happening at home. ...He sees what can happen and he sees how just a little bit of time, a little bit of love, can help a kid."

That and the fact that he's "just a big teddy bear of a man."

Mike Hawkins calls him that, too, and he also calls Chuck "the bravest man I ever met."

Mike, principal of Lexington High School, helped Chuck revive the Midstate Conference Music Festival four years ago because Chuck believed there should be more creative and academic activities for his high school students.

"He got it started and he would not let it die," Mike said. And, "he pretty much made us promise that it'll go on."

That may be Chuck Snook's legacy in Central Illinois, generations of young musicians playing their songs forever. It would be a pleasant thought to carry to his grave, for in addition to his interest in sports (he was a wrestling coach and he loves outdoor activities) and his love of reading (he taught English for 22 years) he also loves music, particularly jazz. He's the drummer with some friends who get together occasionally to form a combo.

At the beginning of last year's Midstate festival concert, Lexington senior Skye Payne addressed the audience and expressed her feelings, as well, perhaps, as those of her fellow musicians:

"I played on championship volleyball teams, I was a cheerleader and I ran track. All of these activities are great," she said, "but the music festivals are the greatest."

"We want to express our gratitude to the man who dreamed of this event and saw his dream become a reality. For your vision, your tenacity and your hard work we thank you Dr. Snook. Midstate musicians will be forever in your debt."

She had just found out what the students and teachers and most of the people of Flanagan had known for a couple of years, that Chuck Snook was dying.

He found out after taking the advice of a friend and school board member Mary McSherry, who recommended he see a doctor because he was getting up sometimes a dozen times a night to urinate.

Chuck first went to Dr. Larry Stalter in Flanagan, who discovered his prostate hard and enlarged, and recommended he see Kulb, who made the final diagnosis.

At that point Chuck Snook made some decisions:

He would maintain the quality of his life, he would manage his pain ("My motto has been better living through chemistry."), he would keep his sense of humor, he would stay on the job he loved until the disease prevented him from doing it.

The cancer couldn't be cured, but it's progress could be slowed with surgery, so he had the surgery and, he figures, picked up an extra 15 months of life.

He told Braksick what he had. He told his staff what he had. He told his school board what he had and he told his friends what he had. He did not keep it a secret and he did not want sympathy. He just wanted to live as normally as he could for as long as he could.

"We're going to work hard and have a real good time," he told the faculty at Flanagan High, "and when it's over, it's over."

The beginning of the end was the diagnosis. The end of the beginning came last February when a blood test showed the cancer was active again.

Chuck didn't want chemotherapy because at best it would add only a couple months to his life and he would be miserable. He entered, however, a pain management research program at the University of Iowa and, while he may have been on placebos, he believes he got the real thing.

Since then he has tried to maintain as normal a life as possible as the cancer continues to attack his bones, sometimes causing him terrible pain, and other times leaving him alone; and he has come to contemplate the end of his career at Flanagan.

He hopes to finish the school year, and yet...

When the high school musicians gather on March 13 at El Paso High School, they will perform for the first time in The Dr. Charles E. Snook Midstate Conference Music Festival. The conference principals named it for him last spring.

He will be there, of course, and in the back of his mind, where he harbors those dreams of dreams, he may be thinking of that next life he jokes about.

"I want to come back as a gourmet chef during the day," he says, "and play in a jazz quartet in a lounge at night."

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