Jean Nelson
P. O. Box 184
Red Oak, IA 51566 712-623-3504
www.smokekills.org

I awoke with a start early October 12, 1995, Donnie was talking to me! It was my 55^th birthday and six months since my young husband, Donnie, had died of emphysema on April 12^th. He was telling me how angry he was at himself for becoming addicted to tobacco at the early age of 14, and trying so many times to quit, and failing. After several seconds, he asked me to do everything in my power to see that other kids didn’t make that same mistake. Then he was gone again!

I wrote a letter to the editor of the Des Moines Register about Donnie’s death from emphysema, and it was printed in the Register in October, 1995, and at Christmas time I received a letter from a gentleman in South Africa. He said his sister in Denison, Iowa had seen the article and sent it to him. He was offering his condolences on Donnie’s death, and after reading it I put it away thinking what a small world we live in.

Shortly after that, I started this odyssey, going from school to school and town to town talking to kids of all ages, warning them about the dangers of tobacco. At that time a friend and I set up a table in the hallway of the Red Oak High School, where we hung posters, handed out brochures and just talked to the kids as they walked by going to class.

Jan Anderson, the health teacher at the high school, invited me to talk to her students about my experience. Now I go into her classroom each semester, with my message.

I can’t help but think of God’s great love

for us as He said in John 3:16-17, King James Version: “For

God so loved the world that he gave his

only begotten Son, that whoever believes

in him should not perish, but have

eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

Since HE gave HIS ONLY SON WHOM HE LOVED, I guess we must be pretty special. Therefore, shouldn’t we treat our bodies in a special way?

In the summer of 1996 I was asked by the American Cancer Society to help them do a tour around Iowa with a big cake to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Great American Smoke Out. It was going to be my responsibility to build the cake. I asked my neighbors Ralph and Olive Michael to help. Ralph was a retired carpenter with

emphysema and on oxygen 24 hours a day. Olive came up with the idea of a, 10 foot, three tiered cake, one tier fitting into the other, so it would fit into my van. As Ralph would finish a tier, Olive and I would set it aside so he could start another. We had a local sign painter frost it. I toured Iowa for a month setting the cake up in schools, hospitals, and shopping centers asking people to sign names of those who they wished would stop smoking. At the end of the tour there were thousands of names on the cake. Ralph succumbed to his emphysema in June of 1998.

Just before I started the cake tour, as the cake lady, I had my daughter Tracy take a picture of me standing by the cake, and I sent a copy to the gentleman in South Africa. While I was on the road he called and left a message on my answering machine. Imagine my surprise when I heard his voice as I came through Red Oak for the middle school assembly. When we started corresponding he told me he had emphysema, and was fighting big tobacco in South Africa

In 1997 a retired state representative, Phil Brammer, talked to me about forming a chapter of his group “The Iowa Healthy Kids Project” here in southwest Iowa. We talked and visited about it and I was going to do it, then in early 1999 he died of emphysema, and the wind was taken out of my sails, but I breathed a sigh of relief, saying, “Wow, I don’t have to think about that anymore”! But God just kept nudging me, and I kept saying, “Why me, Lord, I’ve never been a public speaker and I know nothing about starting a non-profit? And besides, I’m too OLD”!

Then God tells me, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:13, King James Version.

Emphysema is a horrible disease for the person who has it, and their loved ones who stand by and watch helplessly as they labor for each breath, until the last one is taken.

When I joined a world wide anti-tobacco organization in 1998 called GLOBALink, I heard about a youth baseball team in Kentucky called SMOKING KILLS formed by Mike Sawyer. As Mike and I were talking, the idea came to me to do the same thing in Iowa. Well it is several years later, but this summer that team is going to be a reality at the Montgomery County YMCA. Jim Wood and Dan Miller are going to coach the 5th and 6th grade traveling team. People that know me know that I’m not a sports fan, but I’m getting excited about a SMOKING KILLS team here in Red Oak to tell kids just what tobacco does. So we want to make this team very special with complete uniforms!

Getting back to Donnie’s vision, I have filled out all the papers for incorporation and the 501c3 forms, which was a huge job! On January 9, 2003 the Iowa non-profit corporation “SMOKING KILLS” Education Awareness Inc. was born, and in April we were given the 501c3 status from the IRS.

The gentleman in South Africa named our organization, but I haven’t heard from

him for some time so I fear his health has worsen.

We will give the 1st annual scholarship this spring to a senior who writes the best essay

about what tobacco does to the user and the non-user, and tells why they have chosen to remain tobacco free.

There are plans to use a 6 ft. x 16 ft. billboard near Villisca to advertise “SMOKING KILLS” and the scripture from I Corinthians 6:19-20, King James Version.

“Do you not know that your body is a

temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”We wouldn’t think of starting a fire in the church, so why would we in our bodies, with cigarettes?

As I think about the price God paid for us—

the death of His Precious Son, Jesus Christ,

I feel an urgency to dedicate my time and efforts to push forward with this project for HIS HONOR AND GLORY, and obey His Words in Romans12:1-2, King James Version: "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to

Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy & pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will."

Our banner at the Montgomery County YMCA.

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