Brave cancer fighter inspired wide array of friends

My maternal aunt was an inspiration personally.  But as her enlivening and exhilarating path over the past several years relates to the ethical and policy discussions on this blog, I am posting her obituary from today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (I think the hard copy of the paper ran a picture different than the one I pasted below).

Obituary: Diane Ruse-Rinehart Bellotti / Brave cancer fighter inspired wide array of friends

July 27, 1957 - June 16, 2010

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

By Kaitlynn Riely, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

For years, Diane Ruse-Rinehart Bellotti sent e-mails to an ever-widening circle of family and friends, passing on updates every few weeks about the joys, struggles and happenings of her life.

Whether they were filled with news about a trip to Italy, or gave the latest in her long battle with ovarian cancer, the e-mails focused on the positive, and Sue Lauer, a friend of Mrs. Bellotti's for over a decade, said they usually made her laugh.

For her 50th birthday, Mrs. Bellotti brought together the virtual community she had created, the dozens of friendships she had maintained over the years through her jobs at Mellon Bank, Paychex and ADP, her work with Mt. Lebanon sports teams and the medical professionals she befriended.

At the birthday party, she provided name tags so all her friends could connect faces with the names they'd seen for years on their e-mails.

Mrs. Bellotti died last Wednesday at the age of 52 from respiratory failure. At a memorial service next month, Ms. Lauer said, her family and friends, brought together by Mrs. Bellotti's years of messages, will again don name tags.

"My sister loved people, and one of the things she did is she met as many people as possible and tried to get to know them, and tried to learn something from everyone," said Robin Ruse-Rinehart Barris, Mrs. Bellotti's older sister, who lives in Los Angeles.

Born July 27, 1957, in Scott, Mrs. Bellotti was the second daughter of Robert E. Ruse, a stock broker who died before her birth, and Marian Patton Ruse, a local fashion model. A few years later, her mother married Robert Rinehart.

After she graduated from Montour High School, Mrs. Bellotti worked briefly as a cosmetologist, then went into finance. She met her husband, Thomas Bellotti, at Primanti Brothers, and left Pittsburgh for three years as he went to school in Houston and took a job in Baltimore.

They moved back to Pittsburgh and settled in Mt. Lebanon. In 1996, when her son, Thomas Bellotti Jr., was 3 years old, Mrs. Bellotti was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Instead of despairing, she told friends she was determined to set the world record for surviving ovarian cancer.

For 14 years, she was in and out of hospitals as she underwent multiple abdominal surgeries, dozens of rounds of chemotherapy and months of radiation therapy. She participated in clinical trials at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., and her cancer went in and out of remission. The whole time, her sister said, she lived by the maxim, if someone invites you to do something that sounds fun, do it.

With or without hair, Mrs. Bellotti went parasailing, parachuting and jet skiing. She rode zip lines from mountaintop to mountaintop in the Dominican Republic, went to the 2006 Super Bowl in Detroit and to California to attend movie premieres with her sister. She was a loyal cheerleader for her son and his friends at his sports games.

Her cancer had been in remission for a year when she was diagnosed with treatment-related leukemia in the spring. She died from respiratory failure after a lung infection, but Mrs. Barris said she is proud her sister's death certificate does not say ovarian cancer.

She is survived by her sister, husband and 17-year-old son. A memorial service is planned for late July. Those interested in attending may send an e-mail to celebratediane@earthlink.net. The family suggests donations to the Humane Society or other animal organizations.