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Birmingham natives Lolly Friedman Miller and Tracy Stein will be honored this month at the 10th annual Houston Hadassah Women of Courage Awards. The daughters of Karl Friedman and the late Gladys Friedman, Miller and Stein will be recognized for their leadership in numerous organizations and how they “have courageously faced their own individual challenges with breast cancer.” The award recognizes women “who have focused on important issues in the community and gone the extra mile to make a difference in the lives of others.” The timing of the luncheon during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month also is a reminder of Hadassah Medical Organization’s “groundbreaking work in discovering the mutation which triggers breast cancer and the development of the blood test which reveals its presence.” Miller became involved with Hadassah as a pre-teen member of Young Judaea in Birmingham. She has been recognized with the Houston Jewish Federation’s Young Leadership Award, the ADL’s first Young Leadership Award, and National ADL’s Daniel R. Ginsberg Leadership Award. Currently, she sits on M.D. Anderson’s Cancer Survivorship Steering Committee and its Clinical Care Workgroup, which have created and are continuing to develop the hospital’s system for delivering medical care and support to the ever-growing cancer survivor population. Miller was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1994 and underwent chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. The next year she had a stem cell transplant and a prophylactic hysterectomy a few years later when she tested positive for the BRCA-2 mutation. Stein was by her side the whole time. With a family history of breast cancer and her sister’s diagnosis she opted for prophylactic mastectomies. Stein has been active in Federation, ADL, Vanderbilt Hillel and the Mental Health/Mental Retardation Agency of Harris County. She was president of the American Jewish Committee in Houston and is currently on its national Board of Governors and Board of Project Interchange. She also started the annual campaign for Beth Yeshurun Day School and cochaired the first Collage Luncheon with Miller and her in-laws. The luncheon will be at the Houston Westin on Oct. 19, with a silent auction starting at 10:30 a.m. Tickets are $118 with patron levels starting at $500. Charlie Gamarski of Dothan was presented with an Associates Degree from Troy University at Dothan. Gamarski had returned to school to earn a social work degree so he could become a counselor, but after two years of study he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Treatment was ineffective and he had to discontinue his studies. After Gamarski’s condition was determined to be terminal, his advisor at Troy, Jeff Waller, arranged for a two-year degree and dressed in full academic regalia presented it to Gamarski, who died a week later. Waller and Gamarski are pictured here with Gamarski’s partner, Chela Kaplan. Rabbi Lynne Goldsmith of Dothan’s Temple Emanu-El said Waller’s actions showed “there are indeed angels, and these angels are human beings doing God’s work.”