ADAMS -- Betsy's Buddies made it a summer to remember for their namesake.

Heather Irvin, Jeni Lind, Laura Retterath and Jessica Zillgitt, all Southland High School graduates, are friends forever and forever friends of Betsy Matheis.

"We are so very grateful for what they did. It just shows what great young people we have in this world," said Betsy's mother, Carol Matheis.

When one of their best friends was diagnosed with cancer, the four college students decided they would show their love and support for Matheis in that most tangible of ways: helping the family financially.

The medical expenses were steadily rising and the family would need the help.

The idea was a benefit and no one was more deserving than their friend since grade school, Matheis, according to her friends.

On May 22, Matheis was diagnosed with B-cell lymphoma. The next day, she began chemotherapy treatment.

According to Carol, her daughter tolerated the chemotherapy well throughout the summer and underwent her sixth treatment earlier this month. "She responded well," the mother said. "There is a PET scan to come, which is something they do to find any living cancer cells. She's been amazing."

From the outset of the health crisis, Matheis' friends wouldn't be denied. The original planners, Irvin, Lind, Retterath and Zillgitt, formed a committee soon after the diagnosis was learned and immediately the committee grew as more people in the Southland school district learned about the benefit.

Plans soon took shape for a July 24 pork supper benefit at Little Cedar Lutheran Church, rural Adams, the Matheis family's home church.

All of the youths worked long and hard, planning the event, soliciting donations and advertising.

Three hogs were donated along with virtually all the other food for the pork supper. Everyone was generous.

The girls also planned a raffle to help raise funds. All the raffle prizes were donated.

Next, the organizers decided to hold a silent auction to raise more money and again all the items were donated.

The parents of the organizers also volunteered to help. When July 24 arrived, the first volunteers arrived in the morning and stayed all the way through the evening hours; some until 10 p.m. when it ended.

When it was over, the pork benefit supper, raffle drawings and silent auction were called a huge success. More than 800 people attended. Matching funds from local Lutheran Brotherhood and Aid Association for Lutheran organizations helped swell the total money raised as well as donations from Weyerhaeuser.

When the amounts were added, the final total came to an incredible $21,200.

Betsy Matheis and her family expressed their extreme gratitude and found the show of support and generosity to be heart-warming and over-whelming. The mother, in particular, praises the Southland school district's "great kids" repeatedly.

A member of the Southland graduating class of 2000, just like her friends, Matheis is the daughter of Jerry and Carol Matheis. She has an older brother and an older sister. For the last two summers, she has worked at Weyerhaeuser's Austin plant. Now, she is a junior at Southwest State College, Marshall, where she is majoring in sports management.

Carol said the family is "very proud of the effort and support they received from Heather, Jeni, Jessica and Laura, as well as all the other friends who helped in any way with the benefit."

But the giving didn't end.

By now known as "Betsy's Buddies," the same young people -- plus Betsy -- walked in the 2002 Relay For Life fund-raiser in mid-August for the American Cancer Society.

Twelve "Buddies" in all walked around the Mill Pond Pathway in Horace Austin Park in Austin and raised $1,600 for cancer research.

"There are a lot of great young people coming out of the Southland area and we are proud of all of them,"

Today, Betsy and her buddies have gone their separate ways as summer comes to an end and college classes and jobs resume.

Her mother said the cancer survivor was helped, in part, by the Mayo Clinic's doctors, nurses and support technicians, and "her positive attitude."

"She doesn't want cancer to control her life," she said.

To that extent, the cancer survivor can be seen walking across her college campus and into a classroom baldheaded. "She wore a doo-rag this summer, but now she's baldheaded. 'This is who I am', she said," Carol recounted.

Lee Bonorden can be contacted at 434-2232 or by e-mail at :mailto:lee.bonorden@austindailyherald.com