Lisa Calderone-Stewart is still battling cancer but has completed her novel, Made to Write
About a year ago BizTimes wrote about Lisa Calderone-Stewart. She was a teacher, a youth director at Milwaukee’s House of Peace and also directed the youth leadership program Tomorrow’s Present. According to physician predictions Calderone-Stewart should already be dead. She isn’t; and she has written and dedicated a novel to Tomorrow’s Present, a program committed to improving the lives of inner city children.
In June 2009, Calderone-Stewart was diagnosed with lymphoma in her liver. Additional tests were conducted and she was also diagnosed with bile duct cancer, a fast moving non-responsive, aggressive form of cancer that only affects 3,000 people in the United States. Doctor’s gave Calderone-Stewart six months to live after her first treatment.
That was over a year ago, Calderone- Stewart is still alive and in good spirits.
“Doctors who looked at my most recent CAT scan this past October said that they would predict such a patient would only be able to live one more week,” Calderone-Stewart said in a letter. “Yet I am just not dying as quickly as everyone thought! I was in New Jersey five months before they told me to come back home and live some more!”
Calderone-Stewart traveled to New Jersey to live with family when she thought the time was getting near. She finished her novel Made to Write and has dedicated 100 percent of the proceeds to Tomorrow’s Present to help the progress she has made with the organization move forward.
Tomorrow’s Present, has been instrumental in improving the lives of children and adults in Milwaukee’s inner city and beyond. In 2009, 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.
When she was diagnosed she made 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.
Calderone-Stewart made it clear that she has not gotten better, nor has her condition improved.
“I am sicker, more tired, and have more pain,” she said. “But I’m still not ready for a full time nurse; I am still fairly independent, even though I have a friend living with me to be sure I’m OK.”
She self-published her novel, Made to Write, because she didn’t think she had enough time to wait for a publishing company to pick it up and publish it, she said.
The book is loosely based on Calderone-Stewart’s life, but she admits that it is also highly fictionalized. It’s about someone who works with young people in an urban community center, and even though its fiction much of what happens in the book could or would happen at a place like House of Peace, she said.
The book retails on Lulu.com and can be purchased for $7, all proceeds from the sale of the book go towards Tomorrow’s Present. To read more about Calderone- Stewart’s Story, visit the BizTimes Milwaukee Story, Leaving a Legacy.
