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His illness also coincided with The Shopping Center Group’s merger with Northwest Atlantic. Gillman, who worked at Northwest Atlantic for 13 years before the merger, had to oversee many of the logistical transitions.
Gillman felt his most important role, however, was making sure his clients, which include Sonic, Smashburger, L.A. Fitness, and Costco, were taken care of. “Picking a new health plan or whatever can wait,” he says. “The pressure of get- ting back was more not to disappoint clients. The clients we deal with—they have important jobs and deadlines. It was probably more pressure I put on myself than they put on me.”
Gillman credits his wife, Terri, an accountant, for nursing him through this difficult period. “My wife took care of me for nine months,” he says. “She’d change my dressing, give me God knows how many meds, do some of her work remotely, and then I’d go and take a client out during the day.”
His colleagues also helped pick up the slack at the office. “One of the luxu- ries of being a partner is you don’t have a boss,” he says. ”People understand people get sick, but they worry about their own jobs. They could have thrown me overboard, but they were all pretty good about it.”
Now Gillman is back to work full- time, commuting every day from his home in Long Island to his office in White Plains. And, in the past three months, he hasn’t gotten any more infections. “The treatment seems to be working and doesn’t involve cutting me open, so I’m all in favor of that. After three major surgeries, and one minor surgery, they think they have finally got- ten rid of this,” he says. “I like working. I enjoy going on tours with clients when they open stores. I don’t share in their profits, but I do share in the glory that they’re doing well. I don’t like sitting in traffic. You don’t get used to that after all these years.”
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Deborah Milone
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HUDSON VALLEY GATEWAY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
n May 10, 2010, Deborah Milone accepted her dream job as executive director of the Hudson Valley Gateway Chamber of Commerce, an organization she had been a member of since 1992, which provides services to busi-
nesses, residents, and tourists in Northern Westchester and Putnam County. Exactly two months later, on July 10, she
was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“When you first hear the news, you think, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die,’”
Milone says. “And I just started the job, and loved the job. I thought, ‘Why now?’”
Thankfully, Milone was diag- nosed early and was able to start treatment immediately. Milone told her board chairman, Bill Powers, the news, but didn’t tell the entire board about her diagno- sis right away. “Everybody hears ‘cancer,’ and you don’t want to start going into details,” Milone says. “I wanted to do my job, live my life, and deal with this privately.”
Powers suggested she take two weeks off after her lumpec- tomy surgery as her doctor rec- ommended, but Milone insisted on showing up for work a week later. “Because I really believe in the mission of the Chamber of Commerce, I felt an obligation to maintain and keep it going,” says Milone, who at the time had no other staff. “It was personal motivation, as well. I wanted to make my mark.”
Surrounded by a team of doc- tors, Milone was under anesthe- sia for four hours in order for them to find the affected lymph nodes. Physically, Milone says the surgery “hurt, but it was something I could tolerate.” The surgery was more emotionally grueling. “I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know what they’ll find in there. I don’t know what I’ll look like.’”
Milone was able to return to work the next week, as she’d hoped, but to limit the likelihood of the cancer returning, she still had to get a month of radiation, begin Tamoxifen treatment, and receive a low dosage of chemo- therapy every three weeks for four-and-a-half months.