This story begins with a tweet in January by Edina High School student Emma Bonthius, now a senior. Her message: “Today Katie Dickey’s amazing super-mom is entering brain surgery. Please pray for her and her family to give her the strength to fight this battle. #flexforAnn.” Or maybe this story starts with Rick Dow’s nomination of Ann Dickey that same month for an Edina Community Foundation Connecting With Kids leadership award. Or maybe it simply starts with Ann herself, an Edina mother of four children ages 9 to 17, a much-loved swim coach for the Southdale YMCA Sharks, a gracious and upbeat woman who, in spite of battling melanoma for the past 18 months, says she has great friends who have helped her “make lemonade out of lemons.”
The timing of both the Twitter campaign and the award nomination couldn’t have been better, says Dickey. “In January I was having headaches and we found out that the melanoma had moved to the brain,” she explains. Surgery to remove the cancer was more extensive than anticipated, and Dickey ended up with right-side paralysis. “I couldn’t move my right arm or leg,” she says, adding that she also had difficulty with speech and mental processing. “The #flexforAnn tweets were a perfect kind of support,” she says, as they were brief and positive while not demanding the concentration she hadn’t yet recovered. “Every night in the hospital my husband and I would pull up Twitter to see who had flexed for Ann,” she recalls fondly.
Nearly 200 tweets with the hashtag #flexforAnn have been posted by Ann Dickey fans, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, KARE-11 meteorologist Belinda Jensen and a few professional football and baseball players. The #flexforAnn tweets have come from Edina and from places as far away as the Ozarks. Nearly all include photos with smiling faces and flexed arms. Hashtag creator Bonthius says, “I never expected it would be so popular,” thinking perhaps that only she and Katie’s friends might participate. “But then people from Katie’s sister’s grade responded, and Ann’s family in other parts of the country, and local families who know Ann from the YMCA.” Bonthius is delighted, of course, with the outpouring of support. “I did it as something to exemplify Ann’s strength through the whole journey. She’s shown nothing but positivity.”
Dickey’s Connecting With Kids award nomination by Dow also came at an auspicious time. “I found out about it while I was still down at Mayo,” she says. Dow chokes up describing what Dickey has meant to the Edina community, particularly in her role as YMCA swim coach. “Our sons are best buddies at school,” he says, and Dickey convinced him to transfer his son from another Edina swim team to the Sharks. “Ann’s Sharks team was a great fit for him,” he says. “It’s competitive and at the same time nurturing,” he says in his written nomination. In the nomination, Dow’s praise runs from high-quality coaching of more than 100 children for nearly 15 years at the Y to her insistence on team members supporting and encouraging each other. He also praises her “Sharks Out of the Water” community service projects, headed by team captains, and under Dickey’s leadership, organizing social outreach efforts. “She gives unconditionally, with no regard for herself,” says Dow of Dickey. “She never complains. Ann’s a rock star.”
Dickey is grateful to have no residual disability from the brain surgery and is even driving again. The road ahead includes oral chemotherapy and immunotherapies that are lately offering great hope to people with melanoma. “I still have cancer in my body,” says Dickey. “I still have a way to go.” She has not returned to her job at the YMCA, although she hopes to continue in some kind of advisory capacity. Efforts like the Twitter campaign of Bonthius and the award nomination by Dow “are humbling,” she says. “They speak volumes of our community, how everyone is always looking out for someone else.”
