NJ Calendar Girls Bare All For Prostate Cancer Awareness

Prostate Cancer Coalition of New Jersey's Stand By Your Man Calendar Girls are 12 New Jersey women whose husbands have been diagnosed with prostate cancer. This morning we had three of the 12 Calendar Girls -- Sheila Rosko, Mary McCalea, Donna Almquist and Kathy Gartner -- and their husbands. The featured women range from ages 40 to 78.

What all these women have in common is that their husbands have been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and are here to share their stories with us. They all come from different backgrounds throughout the state and range in age from 40 to 78.

Prostate cancer affects 1 in 6 men today, and, though there has been a tremendous amount of research on the subject, little is known about how to prevent it from occurring. Even with state of the art treatment, the basic fact is that awareness and early detection of the disease are most often the best defense a man can have.

These women come from all walks of life, some never having met until the day they showed up for their turn in front of the camera. They came to stand by their men, to help in whatever way they could.

Their calendar was inspired by a true story about eleven middle-aged Englishwomen who posed nude for their annual Women's Institute calendar as a fund-raiser for the local hospital. Each woman posed behind a different task that their Women's Institute teaches each member, such as making bread rolls, knitting, planting flowers, and playing the piano. More than $450,000 was raised. The money was used to fund cutting edge research into lymphoma and leukaemia at the University of Leeds. In addition to the calendars sucess, six of the original WI Calendar women posed for a postcard titled "Baker's Half Dozen."

To purchase the Prostate Cancer Coalition of New Jersey's Stand By Your Man Calendar, visit www.pcc-nj.org.

Written by LaTeisha Clay.