Nevermind: Cancer Group Decides to Keep Gilda Radner's Name After Serious Backlash
Gilda's Club Madison has decided not to rename itself after all.
The cancer support group announced late last year that it would be abandoning its name because young patients weren't familiar with Gilda Radner, the legendary Saturday Night Live player who passed away in 1989 of ovarian cancer.
The decision sparked an online backlash, and eventually led the chapter's board to reverse course.
"It really struck a chord with folks and all of us agreed we want people to come to Gilda's and get the help that they need," Gilda's Club Madison board chairman Wayne Harris told the Associated Press. "If this is what it takes to make that happen, we're all as a group happy to make it happen."
The Madison chapter's director, Lannia Stenz, said the board's vote to keep the group's name was not as motivated by concern for donation loss as by "the feedback our board and staff received from our members and community."
Actor Gene Wilder, Radner's widower and co-founder of Gilda's Club, responded with shock to news of the name change.
"[A reporter] told me about the name change and I said, ‘I had no idea,'" Wilder told Web2Carz back in December. "Then I pictured that Gilda was hearing it too and that she was really sad and asking me, ‘How could they do that?' She would have cried."