Gilda's Club aims to open its doors – somewhere – in 2021

LACONIA – While some things might have gone into a deep freeze this year due to the pandemic, the effort to launch the Gilda’s Club New Hampshire has continued to proceed.

The latest sign of progress is the recent announcement of the hiring of Scott Kalicki as executive director. Kalicki is a Laconia resident and is well-known as the former president of Lakes Region Community College. Kalicki, the local chapter’s first hire, started on Dec. 1.

Gilda’s Club is a network of organizations that serve as centers of support for cancer patients and their loved ones. Named in honor of Gilda Radner, member of the original cast of Saturday Night Live, the first Gilda’s Club was opened nearly 30 years ago in New York City. There are now Gilda’s Clubs across the country – but none in Northern New England.

The effort to start one locally goes back a little more than two years, when Pat Anderson decided to fill the gap in service she found after moving here. Anderson, a breast cancer survivor, had formed a club in Madison, Wisconsin, when she lived there temporarily to help her mother through her illness. She was troubled to realize that there wasn’t anything like a Gilda’s Club in New Hampshire – even though the state ranks in the top quarter of new cancer diagnoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Anderson’s goal, said Kalicki, is for the local chapter of Gilda’s Club to open in 2021. To do that, they will need to identify a space, and to raise the money necessary to secure it.

Gilda’s Clubs are comfortable and home-like in atmosphere, places where anyone can drop in for social interaction, structured programming or just quiet reflection. Kalicki said they would be looking for something in the 3,000- to 3,500-square-foot range, located in a place that is easy to find and access, with outdoor space that could be used during nice weather, and with adequate parking capacity nearby. Because they envision the club as drawing from all corners of the state, they think the Lakes Region, and Laconia in particular, would make for a good geographical location.

If they can’t find a long-term solution, they would consider a highly visible office space, somewhere they could “hang a shingle out, so to speak,” said Kalicki.

Even without a location, Gilda’s Club New Hampshire has already started reaching out to local people whose lives have been touched by cancer. They have held some online and virtual events, in keeping of this year’s emphasis on social distancing.

“We will look to continue that,” Kalicki said. “We think that’s an important way to serve the needs of the community so people can see what we do.”

The Gilda’s Club New Hampshire Facebook page currently has about 150 followers, but Kalicki said that there are “easily several hundred” who would benefit from the organization’s services.

Given the prevalence of the disease, it’s the rare person who has never been diagnosed with, or who doesn’t have a friend or family member who has suffered from cancer. Kalicki was in that minority, he said, until his mother’s diagnosis.

“Up to that point in my life, I was not someone who was, as Gilda Radner said, a member to an elite club that I didn’t want to be a part of,” he said, referring to a phrase that Radner used to describe her life as a cancer patient.

“It caused me to really pay attention to the issue and to the struggles and to how it really impacts life, and how important it is that no one is alone when they’re dealing with cancer,” Kalicki said. “I didn’t have a Gilda’s Club. It would have been helpful, when that reality smacked me in the face, to have a supportive community to go to.”