3 daughters know the gifts Rosie gives will survive

When the 17th annual Cancer Survivors' Celebration and Walk kicks off this Sunday morning along Chicago's lakefront, 49-year-old Rosie Baldwin of Arlington Heights won't be there. Given that her advanced lung cancer is now in the "end stages," everybody gathered around her bed is aware of the sad possibility that Rosie might not even still be "here."

"From the very first day Rosie was diagnosed, even before the kids got home from school, we decided the kids would know everything," says Ben Baldwin, Rosie's husband. "No sugarcoating, no pulling punches, no making it easier for a child's ear."

The stunned parents told their three daughters that the persistent summer cough Mom developed after Mother's Day 2009 actually was a symptom of an aggressive lung cancer that had spread throughout her body.

"This," a doctor told them, "is not the kind of cancer that we try to cure."

Of course, Rosie, Ben, family, friends, neighbors and a host of doctors did try, and are still trying, whatever they can to cure the cancer. Hannah, 15, Maddie, 13, and Lara, 8, got a different task.

"Their job was living their lives as best they could," Ben says.

That's exactly what the girls and an army of friends were doing at the end of Monday's local Memorial Day Parade, when they passed out lemonade and collected almost $2,000 for their new Rosie's Lemon-Aid Stand Against Lung Cancer charity.

"We came up with it kind of fast the night before," says Hannah, who was inspired by the 40 bucks raised by a lemonade stand in honor of their mom operated by neighborhood boys and friends Danny Ferris, a fifth-grader, and Ethan Lindborg, a sixth-grader.

By sowing good deeds in a life filled with helping others, schools and charities, Rosie reaps an outpouring of help now. She's inspiring to everyone who knows her, and "I wanted lots of people to see that," Hannah explains.

"Cancer sucks, but this part of it, and getting our kids to witness this, I think it's good for them to see how good people are," Rosie said during an interview last summer. "We are blessed."

Rosie is too weak for interviews now. Even accepting a spoonful of ice chips is a chore.

"That's my job usually," Hannah says of the ice chip duty. "I like just watching her and being with her as much as I can."

The family has moments when they acknowledge their sadness and anger that Rosie, a health-conscious nonsmoker, got this cruel and horrific disease. But that inspires them to spread the word about lung cancer, which kills more Americans than breast cancer, prostate cancer and colon cancer combined.

"I like seeing my mom happy that me and my younger sisters are so into this," Hannah says of the effort to raise money and awareness about lung cancer. They did that at Monday's parade.

"By the end of it, a lot of people knew about it," Hannah says. "We could hear them screaming and that was really cool."

Buoyed by support from legions of family, friends and even strangers, the girls and their dad keep their lives afloat.

"I don't even want to contemplate what it is that requires them to be so strong and so wise," Ben says of the girls as he leaves to take one to soccer tryouts.

The entire family's reaction to something so unfair and devastating is inspiring, and that seems to be hereditary.

"I don't know how much longer we will have Rosie," Ben's sister, Kate Leipprandt, says Saturday, "but her courage will inspire us for a lifetime."