Leaving a legacy

In 2001, she became the director of youth leadership at Milwaukee’s House of Peace. She has published more than 20 books and more than 50 articles on transformational youth leadership techniques.

Her youth leadership program, Tomorrow’s Present, has been instrumental in improving the lives of children and adults in Milwaukee’s inner city and beyond. Since 2001, all but one of her House of Peace Teen Leaders, a program that annually offers 12  teen scholars the opportunity to receive a scholarship to attend high school and learn leadership techniques, has gone on to college - a first for many of their families.

Now, Calderone-Stewart is dying. She is constantly tired and exhausted, but she is still smiling. From her couch in her condominium on Milwaukee’s south side, she makes it known that her wish is that the progress she has made with the Teen Leaders and the programs at the House of Peace continues after she is gone.

On June 2, doctors detected lymphoma in Calderone-Stewart’s liver. Lymphoma is a responsive cancer, and she thought she would be able to deal with it. 

“A lot of people can have lymphoma for 10, 12 even 15 years, and they will be OK,” Calderone-Stewart said. “It’s slow moving, and it’s very responsive to treatment.”

However, after additional tests were conducted, it was determined that Calderone-Stewart actually had bile duct cancer, a fast moving, non-responsive, aggressive form of cancer that affects only 3,000 people in the United States.

The most effective and most common treatment for bile duct cancer is a process known as chemoembolization, a procedure in which anti-cancer drugs are injected through a catheter directly into the blood vessel feeding a cancerous tumor.

Calderone-Stewart said her doctors wanted to inject eight cubic centimeters of the drug into the growth. She only made it through two, before she made them stop.

“I don’t remember it, but apparently I was screaming at the doctors to stop because I was in serious pain,” she said.

For most patients, there is little to no discomfort for the first three days. But for Calderone-Stewart that was not the case.

Her mother passed away in New Jersey two days before she went in for the procedure. Calderone-Stewart was too sick to attend her mother’s funeral, and a recovery that was supposed to last less than two weeks ended up taking more than five. She flew home from New Jersey almost a month later.

“I can’t even imagine how I would have felt with more doses,” Calderone-Stewart said. “I was in such awful pain.”

A follow-up CT-scan revealed that the treatments had absolutely no impact on the cancer.

“It was disappointing, I mean they only gave me two doses, but if my recovery time for so much less was nearly five weeks. How bad would it be with another dose?” she said.

Every other procedure the doctors offered would have worse side effects and lower chances of being effective, she said.

“I thought to myself, ‘Forget it.’ I’d rather get better, and do everything I can for Tomorrow’s Present, get things in order, get people trained, get the legacy fund formed and get money coming in,” she said.

So that’s what she is doing. Doctors have given Calderone-Stewart six months to live.

In addition to helping get her affairs in order, her two sons, Michael and Ralph, are learning the Tomorrow’s Present organization inside and out. They hope to find a successor for her mother’s mission. They also want to be a resource to volunteers and other House of Peace professionals who will strive to keep it going.

“I’ve been trying to write all this stuff down. It’s all in my head,” Calderone-Stewart said. “I want to keep the traditions involved in the program alive. It all comes naturally to me, because I’ve been doing it for so long. For somebody else, that won’t be the case.”

Volunteers have stepped up to assume some of the duties of the Tomorrow’s Present programs, and Calderone-Stewart hopes that will continue.

“I know this stuff makes a difference, I’ve always wanted to do a long-term study; a follow up with past Teen Leaders, and youth in the programs,” she said. “I never got a chance to, but I know this stuff matters – it’s so important to me and for the kids.”