C.R. woman creates activity book to raise funds for cancer research

When Chris Offenburger Walsh started fundraising for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society five years ago, she thought she understood what cancer patients and their families were facing.

Then in July 2009, her brother, former Des Moines Register “Iowa Boy” columnist Chuck Offenburger, was diagnosed with small cell non-Hodgkins follicular lymphoma.

“You hear stories of people going through it,” Walsh says. “But you don't really understand until a family member is diagnosed.”

Walsh had been selling teddy bears as a fundraiser for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's annual Light the Night Walk but wanted to do something different this year.

“I don't think there's a living human I know who doesn't have one of those bears,” she says.

She combined her love of the Iowa Hawkeyes with her experience as a teacher to create “Hawktivity,” an activity book with Hawkeye-themed crossword puzzles, word searches, math puzzles and coloring pages. She received licensing approval from UI to use Hawkeye logos in the activity book, including Herky the Hawk on the cover.

“When kids think of Hawkeyes, they think of Herky,” she says.

“Hawktivity” and other children's books she has written are under the umbrella of Activilicious Productions, a business Walsh and her partner, Karl Werner, formed in their southeast Cedar Rapids home.

Since “Hawktivity” was released this summer, it has been popular, Walsh says. The books are available in Scheels sports stores throughout Iowa, the Black and Gold Shop in Coralville, The Eastern Iowa Airport south of Cedar Rapids and through Walsh's website www.

activiliciousproductions.com

The director of Scheels marketing likes the book so much he asked Walsh to create books for other colleges, including Iowa State University, University of Nebraska, University of North Dakota and North Dakota State.

A portion of the sales of all Activilicious books will go toward The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Walsh will be selling “Hawktivity” at the Light the Night Walk which starts at 6 p.m. today at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City.

“Sometimes I wish I was still fundraising for people I never knew or had yet to meet,” Walsh says. “On the other hand, my brother shows me every day the strength of the human spirit.”

Offenburger's journey with cancer began in the summer of 2009. He thought he had injured himself while biking when his left ankle was unusually swollen. However, the swelling was a result of the lymphoma, which, by then, was in advanced Stage IV.

He went through six months of chemotherapy and shortly after starting a “maintenance program,” his wife, Carla, had surgery in April to remove a jaw tumor which was found to contain adenoid cystic carcinoma cancer.

She completed radiation in July and the couple planned to enjoy this fall without cancer treatments. However, just days after his wife's last treatment, Offenburger noticed a pain in his left hip.

Although the doctor first believed the pain was an agitation of the sciatic nerve, an MRI revealed Offenburger developed large cell non-Hodgkins lymphoma, an aggressive form of cancer.

He is now undergoing intensive chemotherapy in Ames and will eventually be admitted to the UI Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center's Adult Blood and Marrow Transplantation Program in Iowa City, where he will have a stem-cell transplant.

Walsh is remaining positive throughout the cancer battle faced by the brother with whom she is close.

“Our family had like two families,” she says. “There were the first five kids and then Chuck and me. We grew up in the house together.”

The siblings are four years apart; he is 63 and she 59.

“He's ready for what is to come,” Walsh says. “He's a man of deep, deep faith. He loves life and loves people. I wouldn't expect him to take this on any other way.”