Fanning the Flames of the Diabetes Epidemic

RODUCTION

It is my pleasure to introduce to you, a new Diabetes Prevention Education, Public Relations Campaign established under the name Fannie Estelle Hill Grant, started by me, Lyndia Grant-Briggs, after the loss of my mother who succumbed to Type 2 Diabetes on Christmas Day, December 25, 2000. I noticed a fire burning in the Diabetes health arena, and it is still burning out of control. The Diabetes prevention and education public relations campaign was started in an effort, to "Fan the Flames", and put out the fire.

Fannie Grant was 73 years old, a homemaker, who loved her family very much, and she believed in preparing wonderful Home-cooked meals for the family. You name it, and we had it. We would have desserts any day of the week. Mama enjoyed cooking, cleaning and washing clothes, and although she raised nine children of her own, she always had room for other needy children.

In our early years, from 1945-1965, Mother was the wife of a sharecropper in North Carolina, but they moved the family to Washington, D.C. in 1965. So for more than 30 years, Mother Grant, our father and all of us children called the Washington Metropolitan Area Home.

Our family learned that Mother had Type 2 Diabetes after a major stroke she had back in 1988-89. She lived 11-12 years after the diagnosis. Lyndia and her Sisters, (The Grant Sisters) pledged to begin the educational prevention campaign while they visited with and/or cared for their mother during her last year of life.

After moving back home to North Carolina, Mother Grant enjoyed her latter years in a very peaceful way. Us children purchased her a new Home, took over all of the mortgage payments, and she was happy. Mother Grant enjoyed living on this wonderful 227-acre farm, near Kinston, North Carolina. She was one of the heirs to this wonderful farm left to her family by their father, and my grandfather, Floyd Hill.

She enjoyed walking around the farm, following my father, Bishop Benjamin Grant, around the garden as he worked. She enjoyed shopping with her sisters going to yard sales. Shopping gave her considerable joy near the end of her life.

Mother suffered numerous strokes, seven to ten to be specific. During one stoke, she lost the use of her tongue and couldn't speak at all. Mother Fannie's kidney failed, she was receiving kidney dialysis for the last two years of her life, she had high blood pressure for many years, and both of her legs were amputated above her knees.

The Problem

We wanted to know more about the disease that took our mother in such a brutal fashion. There was so much pain and suffering prior to her death. Mother Grant was a Christian, she was an Evangelist who preached the gospel in churches throughout the Washington D.C. Area, and everyone loved her and called her Ma.

Our mother was very special, and as her oldest daughter, I promised to carry out a public awareness campaign, to educate millions of people regarding the causes and preventions of Type 2 Diabetes. In educating the general public, I feel a lot better, because my mother's living shall not be in vain. My sisters and I have been blessed over the past 20 years, we've had lots of success in publicizing several major events, we coordinated a major festival, called Georgia Avenue Day in Washington, D.C. The festival and parade attracted more than 200,000 people, major corporate sponsors and celebrities. We worked for two Presidential Inaugural Committees, one was for the Republicans, George Herbert Walker Bush and for other for the Democrats, President Bill Clinton, for two D.C. Mayors, Marion Barry and Sharon Pratt Kelly, and three D.C. City Councilmembers, Charlene Drew Jarvis, Frank Smith and