COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) -
Camp Kemo is pretty well known here in the Midlands. It's a summer program for kids whose lives are touched by cancer.
If you're familiar with the charity, you may have heard the director, Jeanne Schmidt, died suddenly over the weekend after suffering an aneurysm.
Unusual as it may be, what happened over and over at Dunkin' Donuts on Two Notch Road exemplified Jeanne.
"On Fridays, she would buy the car behind her," Ralph Schmidt, Jeanne's husband, said. "One day, she shared it with me. I said, 'That's pretty cool. I'm gonna try that.'"
And so on Fridays, that became their thing to do separately at their respective franchises. Sometimes the tab would be $3 dollars, once it was more than $30. Jeanne insisted there was a certain way to execute the gift.
"The real gift was not looking in the rear-view mirror to see who it was or to see their reaction. It was you do it just with blind faith," Ralph said.
When Jeanne wasn't giving a breakfast treat, she was giving kids with cancer a summer treat. When she wasn't hanging out with the husband she met on Lander University's campus or the two girls she'd raised to become women, she headed up Camp Kemo.
"We've had to talk through many things, many of the people we know, some of them were children who unfortunately were not able to survive and so we shouldn't fear talking about that. As a matter of face, we outta glorify them through that."
And now, his wife, the woman who worked to improve threatened lives has lost her own. She had an aneurysm at work, after Ralph had given her some schedule-making advice for her camp kids.
"We talked about 3 minutes and she kind of moved things and said, 'Great, I love you.' It was about an hour later when I got the call. So up until that point, she was still working to serve others," Ralph said.
Ralph says he has his moments, but he's using his wife's strength to keep it together. He doesn't know what all the days ahead will look like, but he does know what this Friday will entail.
"Absolutely. I'll be there. It'll have to happen and Jeanne'll be there with me," Ralph said.
Ralph says the woman he called a giver till the end will continue to give. Her tissue from her body will be donated. He's hoping it might go to a child.
Copyright 2012 WIS. All rights reserved.
