ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 22, 1996 TAG: 9611220049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
TWO EX-SMOKERS had a powerful message for pupils at Fishburn Park on Thursday.
Fifth-grader Pierre Webster turned his head and strained to hear the strange-sounding voices.
"When my vocal chords were removed, I had to learn to talk this way," said Robert Ruff. He spoke in a low, raspy voice that was barely audible at the rear of the cafeteria in Fishburn Park Elementary School.
"I smoked for 35 years. I quit when I began losing my voice and my throat hurt," said Ruff. He eventually lost his voice to throat cancer
"Don't smoke, don't do it. That's my advice," he told the pupils at the Roanoke school.
Bea Chappell spoke with an electric speaker that she held to her throat when she talked. It sounded like a robot. She even joked about her voice at one point, but her message wasn't funny.
"I smoked most of my adult life. I was diagnosed with cancer in 1986 and lost my voice box," Chappell said. "I've been talking like this for 10 years."
Pierre, 11, couldn't hear every word by Ruff and Chappell, but he heard enough.
"I'll never smoke. I don't want to have to talk like that," he said.
Third-grader Michael Douglas made a similar vow.
"People can die from smoking," Michael said. "I'm not going to smoke."
Marcus Phanelson, a fourth-grader, said he won't smoke because "I don't want to get my lungs black."
Fishburn Park's 370 pupils listened intently as the two cancer victims recounted their experience with the disease and their belief that smoking caused them to lose their voices.
Ruff and Chappell spoke at the school as part of the national Great American Smoke-out campaign to persuade youths not to begin smoking and smokers to quit. The Fishburn Park program was one of a number of anti-smoking activities in Roanoke Valley schools Thursday.
Chappell told the children not to begin smoking because it's difficult to quit.
"Smoking is not a habit you can pick up and throw away," she said. "I quit about 15 times, but I always went back."
Chappell said she finally quit "one morning when I got up and had no voice."
Ruff said he stopped when he realized he was going to die if he kept smoking. "It was difficult to stop, but I realized I had to if I wanted to live."
School nurse Kerin Wallace, who helped coordinate the school's anti-tobacco program, said it was designed to help show the children the consequences of smoking.
As part of the smoke-out campaign promoted by the American Cancer Society, the Fishburn Park children observed a moment of silence in memory of the 1,200 people who die daily in the United States from tobacco-related illnesses.
This week, the pupils also decorated the school with 1,200 red paper figures that represented the victims of diseases caused by cigarettes and other tobacco products.
Principal Tom Dunleavy led the children in a series of yells against smoking and tobacco products. The youngsters shouted, "Don't start, don't start, don't start" in gradually louder voices.
LENGTH: Medium: 66 linesby CNB