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1944 — the Allen County Cancer Society's long line
Founding: In 1944, in the agency's own 75th-anniversary account, a Women's Field Army, the Fort Wayne Jaycees and a volunteer named Robert Punsky founded the Allen County Cancer Society as a branch of the American Cancer Society — part of the wartime crusade that made cancer a public cause. The local agency in time became independent of the national society and took the name Cancer Services of Northeast Indiana.
Course: Its addresses chart the growth: offices at 1021 West Wayne Street in 1962, 2925 East State Boulevard in 1975, and 6316 Mutual Drive in 2008. In February 2006 it expanded from Allen County to an eleven-county service area — Adams, DeKalb, Noble, Huntington, Kosciusko, LaGrange, Steuben, Wabash, Wells and Whitley added. Its work is the practical kind: wigs, nutritional support, financial assistance and a client-advocate corps for people in treatment, the local face of a disease whose research money flows elsewhere.
Sources:
- Cancer Services of Northeast Indiana, 75th-anniversary newsletter (August 2019) — the 1944 founding by the Women's Field Army, the Jaycees and Robert Punsky; the office succession; the February 2006 eleven-county expansion.