With all the war and death surrounding us, it behooves us to take time out to think about a woman who defied the odds and won one of the toughest competitions man has designed. I really admired Susan Butcher. She was my type of feminist heroine. May she rest in peace and be remembered for her courage.
Four-Time Iditarod Champ Susan Butcher Dies at 51
Saturday, August 05, 2006
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Four-time Iditarod champion Susan Butcher died Saturday in a Seattle hospital of complications from a recent bone marrow transplant, Sen. Ted Steven's office said. She was 51.
Butcher dominated the 1,100-mile sled dog race in the late 1980s
In 1986, she became the second woman to win the grueling race from Anchorage to Nome. She added victories in 1987, 1988 and 1990 and finished in the top four through 1993.
In 1979, Butcher helped drive the first sled-dog team to the 20,320-foot summit of Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America.
Butcher ran her last Iditarod in 1994 when she decided to have children. She has two daughters, Tekla and Chisana, with her husband, attorney and musher David Monson.
Three years ago, when she was considering a comeback, doctors found Butcher had polycythemia vera, a rare disease that causes the bone marrow to produce excess blood.
Susan Butcher Wikipedia entry here. Susan Butcher website here. The following was posted on her site:
Butcher loses cancer fight
IDITAROD LEGEND DIES: Four-time champion succumbs to leukemia at 51.
By CRAIG MEDRED
Anchorage Daily News
Published: August 6, 2006Far from her Alaska home and the dogs she loved so much, four-time Iditarod champion Susan Butcher died Saturday in a Seattle hospital.
She was 51 years old and the mother of two young daughters. She had been waging a battle against leukemia for a year and a half, but sometimes not even the toughest warriors can win.
A child of the American upper middle class, she turned her back on the civilized world of Cambridge, Mass., to carve out a niche for herself and her beloved dogs in a cold, difficult corner of Bush Alaska.
Through her 20s and into her 30s, she lived an almost cloistered existence in the Interior with her life dedicated to one seemingly impossible goal, winning the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. She spent days on end on the runners of a dog sled following huskies through the frozen taiga and barren wilderness north of Fairbanks.
"I like spending a lot of time alone,'' she told a writer for the Daily News' old Sunday magazine, We Alaskans,' in 1981.
She was then 27 years old and already an Iditarod contender, though it would still be five long and difficult years before the breakthrough Iditarod victory of 1986. By then, she had joined forces with Dave Monson, a one-time lawyer, a fellow dog musher and a soul mate.
Together, they would team to dominate the Iditarod. Butcher was the driving force behind their Trailbreaker Kennels and the face of the business. Monson was the organizer and administrator, the behind-the-scenes player who held everything together.They were married in 1985. Butcher won the first of her four Iditarods the next year. She would go on to win three more in the next four years -- the most impressive string of victories in Iditarod history.
T-shirts soon proclaimed "Alaska: Where men are men and women win the Iditarod.''
By the time Butcher decided to retire from mushing to start a family almost a decade later, her athletic achievements were so well known they had almost become synonymous with the 49th state.
Alaskans who engaged in conversations with strangers while traveling outside the state would often be met with the refrain, "Oh Alaska, isn't that where that woman always wins the dog sled race?" "That woman" was Butcher, and though she eventually bowed out of the Iditarod competition, she never went far away from the race.
She continued to breed, raise, train and sell sled dogs to other mushers, and she regularly assisted various news organizations as a color-commentator and analyst covering the race. Even this March, though weak from chemotherapy treatments, she gritted out a trip to the Bush village of Ruby to work as an Iditarod checker signing dog teams in and out.
It was classic behavior from a woman who did not know the meaning of the word quit.
She was possessed of an indomitable spirit, and it was that which has made it so hard for so many to comprehend that the cancer claimed her.
"I think everyone felt like Susan was such a fighter in the Iditarod that, well, of course Susan Butcher is going to beat this,'' said Mark Nordman, the Iditarod race marshal and a friend. "That's how everyone felt.''
There was even a brief period when it looked obvious Butcher would beat the leukemia the way she used to beat one-time archrival Rick Swenson and all the other men of the Iditarod Trail.
"At the time she had the (bone-marrow) transplant, her leukemia was in remission,'' her Seattle physician, Dr. Jan Abkowitz, said Saturday. "She was feeling absolutely fine.''
The transplant took place May 16. About a month later, Butcher developed graft-versus-host disease in which the immune system from the bone marrow transplant begins attacking her organs. She was rushed from her Fairbanks home back to the University of Washington medical center.
Monson and the couple's two daughters, Tekla, 10, and Chisana, 5, returned to Seattle with her.
Doctors began aggressive treatments to try to stop transplanted bone-marrow cells from destroying Butcher's digestive tract. Monson reported that she was often in excruciating pain from the disease and the treatments but battled on.
Doctors eventually managed to turn back the GVHD with a combination of steroids and experimental drugs.
"Then to our dismay and surprise, about a week ago, when we did a routine bone marrow test, we found that her leukemia had come back," Abkowitz said.
Butcher was given a tough choice: go home and die or begin another round of painful and potentially deadly chemotherapy to drive the leukemia into remission in preparation for another bone-marrow transplant. Those who know Butcher say that choice was really no choice for a woman who'd spent her life going against the odds and beating them.
She resumed chemotherapy, but on Friday her condition worsened. She was moved into an intensive care unit. Monson was at her side, as he has always been for the past 21 years.
He was there when she died Saturday.
News of her death hit hard in Alaska, though it was not totally unexpected. Friend, fellow musher and cancer survivor DeeDee Jonrowe had gone to Seattle to see Butcher just weeks ago fearing it would be their last chance to talk. Others were well aware her condition was perilous.
Throughout her illness, Monson maintained a moving and forthright online journal to keep everyone up-to-date. It was often painfully honest about Butcher's condition as the cancer ravaged the body she once fought so hard to toughen.
In her competitive days, Butcher pushed herself harder than she ever pushed her dogs. There was never a musher more deserving of the honor of being considered "the toughest dog in the team.'' Everyone in and around the sport of long-distance mushing knew that.
"There are few still around that had the benefit of what we call 'The Butcher Years,' '' said musher Martin Buser of Big Lake, himself a four-time champ. "She was certainly an inspiration to all of us. She was certainly one of the forerunners of having dedicated her life to the sled dog, and because of that she was victorious so many times.''
Like others, Buser was having trouble grasping the reality of Butcher's passing.
"It's hard to believe,'' he said. "We don't feel any older than 10 or 15 Iditarods ago, but we are obviously all mortal."
News of Butcher's death was spreading rapidly through the tight-knit world of people involved in sled-dog sports on Saturday night thanks to modern telecommunications.
"Today is a very sad day for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, for all Alaskans, and for every person who has been touched by Susan Butcher,'' the Iditarod said in a message posted on the race Web site, www.iditarod.com. "She will be greatly missed."
Nordman was at Iditarod headquarters in Wasilla on Saturday evening making calls around the world to notify others of Butcher's death. It was not an easy thing to do, nor headquarters an easy place to be.
"Of course, the first thing you see is Susan and Joe (Redington Sr.) climbing Denali and the champion pictures and everything,'' Nordman said. "It's just sad. It's a part of history that has left us.
"It will take a little while for it all to soak in."
The late Joe Redington, the father of the Iditarod, climbed Mount McKinley with Butcher, legendary guide Ray Genet and photographer Rob Stapleton in 1979. Genet later froze to death near the summit of Mount Everest. Cancer got Redington in 1997, and now Butcher.
Nordman said she will be seriously missed as one of the greatest ambassadors of sled dog sports. Even long after retiring, he said, she remained the one about whom visitors to Iditarod headquarters always asked.
"She's left a mark on the sport for sure,'' he said. "On dog care, there was no one finer.
"We knew she was on the biggest battle imaginable, but I think it came as a surprise to everyone that it came especially when it did."
Daily News Outdoor editor Craig Medred can be reached at [email protected]. Megan Holland, Beth Bragg and The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Iditarod legacy
Susan Butcher was a four-time
Iditarod champion who finished in the top 10 in all but two of her 17
races. Her fastest time was 10 days, 22 hours, 3 minutes in 1993.
1978 19th
1979 9th
1980 5th
1981 5th
1982 2nd
1983 9th
1984 2nd
1985 Scratch
1986 1st
1987 1st
1988 1st
1989 2nd
1990 1st
1991 3rd
1992 2nd
1993 4th
1994 10th
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