Upon first meeting Lucy Ann Hancock, one would have no idea of the powerhouse for her advocacy. Breast cancer specifically. She looks like she could be anyone’s grandma: grey/white hair, freshly trimmed and styled.
Hancock is dressed in stylish, comfortable clothes. She has warm, welcoming eyes and a smile, paired with a gentle laugh, that fills the room.
Hancock has been called “everyone’s grandma.” Having no children with her husband of 45 years, Mark (who died in 2017), Hancock claims the students at the Newport News Public Schools (NNPS), where she served as principal, are her grandchildren. And she knew them all by name.
Asked what year she retired from NNPS, she answered “yesterday” with a giggle. She retired in 2011 after 44 years in education, 33 as a NNPS principal.
Hancock’s career as a young elementary school teacher began in downtown Richmond in the thick of segregation. She was 21. “Scared? Oh no!” she says. “It’s just life. You take it as it comes and just keep going.” Eventually, her “keep going” attitude and the steady support from husband Mark helped her tackle a breast cancer diagnosis in 2004.
Hancock had been volunteering with the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer event in Norfolk. In 2012, Hancock and fellow activist Veronica Weymouth (owner of Weymouth Funeral Home) wanted to bring Making Strides to the Virginia Peninsula. With only six months to plan and in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the two women began a Making Strides Against Breast Cancer event at Mariners’ Museum.
Making Strides held its first fund-raising walk in 2012. The planning committee had a fundraising goal of $25,000 and it was easily surpassed, bringing in $115,000. “We were hoping for 500 participants,” Weymouth says. “We had more than 1,200.”
Hancock was off and running. She went to her husband Mark about supporting Making Strides.
“We’re not a company or a corporation,” she says. “But Mark says, ‘Honey, we don’t need to be. This group will take our check just the same.’ And you know what? He was right!”
Their beginning check has since blossomed into the Mark and Lucy Ann Hancock Trust and is now the largest financial backer of Making Strides Against Breast Cancer on the Virginia Peninsula.
Making Strides Against Breast Cancer is the largest fundraising event for the American Cancer Society, with walks across the country raising millions of dollars to support breast cancer research, prevention and patient support. The Virginia Peninsula event is held every October during Breast Cancer Awareness month. It has become so successful it has a permanent home at Newport News Park.
Thousands come out in pink shirts, pink boas, pink shoes, pink knee highs, even pink hair. One of those thousands is Hancock, wearing her “Survivor Sash.”
Hancock lives in a private retirement community now where everyone knows her name, and her apartment door is usually open.
After living a life full of service to others she has only one thing on her Bucket List: “to be kind.”
Throughout the year, Hancock will purchase enamel pink ribbon pins by the thousands. She passes them out to everyone — everyone — she sees.
“Even the men,” Hancock says. “They get breast cancer, too.”
According to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, 1 in 8 women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. In 2024, an estimated 310,720 women and 2,800 men were diagnosed.
Look around you — at the office or at the grocery store. That’s 1 in 8 women. Odds are you know someone who has or had breast cancer. How fortunate to know advocate Luci Ann Hancock, who strives daily to make a difference.
TO THE POINT:
Making Strides Against Breast Cancer
Address: PO Box 4110, Glen Allen, VA 23058
Contact: Mary Beth Taylor, Sr. development manager, American Cancer Society
Phone: 800-227-2345
Email: Marybeth.taylor@cancer.org
Website: www.cancer.org
