Tireless volunteer Baila Janock ensures a lasting legacy

To explore the new Yawkey Center for Cancer Care from every angle, you would be hard-pressed to find a better tour guide than Baila Janock, a founding member of the Dana-Farber Society. For Janock, Dana-Farber provides something even more impressive than the state-of-the-art facilities.

"We are patient-centered care," she says. "In spite of our growth, every patient here is treated as an individual."

Janock has been devoted to Dana-Farber since her husband, Irving Janock, was a patient. Sadly, he passed away from pancreatic cancer in 1985, but she has been actively involved in many ways ever since: as a longtime platelet donor and lifetime member of the Friends of Dana-Farber, as a devoted volunteer at the Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies, as well as several other volunteer committees, and as a bone marrow courier and dedicated fundraiser for the Jimmy Fund. Janock and her late husband were originally from Milford, Mass., which is one of the reasons why she became deeply involved with the Planning Committee that helped launch the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center at Milford Regional Medical Center satellite, where patients receive Dana-Farber's signature world-class care in the convenience of their own community.

In addition to these activities, Janock has created a lasting legacy by making a charitable bequest to Dana-Farber. Her generous bequest will add to the Irving W. Janock Fellowship Fund, which she established in memory of her husband to allow Institute researchers to focus on improving the understanding and treatment of gastrointestinal cancers.

Janock supports the Fellowship through her participation in the Boston Marathon® Jimmy Fund Walk each September. The 25-time walker describes the atmosphere on Walk day as an extraordinary feeling of camaraderie, just as the Dana-Farber Society offers a sense of community and common purpose.

"It gives me great pleasure to be among others who share Dana-Farber's mission and who have planned ahead and care enough to support its future," she says.

Touring the Yawkey Center, Janock highlights the seating in the new Dining Pavilion, which she helped plan.

Considering that she has made over 200 platelet donations and recently zip-lined through the Costa Rican rainforest, one can hardly imagine this tireless volunteer and Dana-Farber Society member stopping long enough to sit down.