Booster club plans cancer benefit

Breakfast will be the most important meal of the day for more than just nutrition Saturday in Williamsburg.

The Jayhawk Booster Club will have a benefit breakfast for Ray Gooding from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. at the Williamsburg Community Building, 126 W. William St.

Gooding, 77, was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer in February.

“He seemed to have a cough that wouldn’t go away,” Lucille Gooding, his wife, said.

The Goodings had operated Lucille’s Cafe in downtown Williamsburg from 1994 until the restaurant closed last month. She had cooked, and he had waited tables.

“A lot of the farmers used to tell him that he needed a shorter skirt” she said with a laugh.

After Ray Gooding’s diagnosis, he wasn’t able to work any longer. Lucille Gooding soon found the business was needing equipment updates that were too costly to keep operating.

“I would’ve had to work for five years to pay them off. I’m 76. I don’t want to work another five years,” she said.

Since the cafe’s closing, the Goodings’ only income has been social security.

“We’re just about to go into the doughnut with the [cost of] medicine,” Lucille Gooding said.

The “doughnut hole” in Medicare Part D, which helps recipients pay for prescription drugs, is a gap that occurs because the plan covers expenses up to $2,700 and then stops. It doesn’t pick up again until expenses have totaled $6,100 annually. Participants pick up all the costs in between.

“The Goodings have been involved with the booster club the last 15 years,” Elston D. Horne, booster club president, said. “We felt like it was time to jump in and do something.”

For those who are unable to attend the breakfast, donations to the Goodings can be made by calling Horne at (785) 746-5641.