This week’s Spotlight is on Sharon Hutto Warren of Summerville. Sharon was featured in The Press and Standard Breast Cancer Edition in 2019. She lost her battle on October 27th.
Sharon was born in Charleston on August 9, 1958. The daughter of Maxine and the late Roy Hutto, she graduated from Walterboro High School. She grew up with two brothers Michael and Kenneth. Sharon had a very successful insurance career as the office manager with CT Lowndes & Company as the office manager. She was a member of the Summerville Baptist Church and taught Sunday School at Old Fort Baptist for 19 years.
Sharon was married to Dean Warren her husband of 30 years and had a son US Army Sergeant First Class Matthew Mangum and a daughter Alexandra Warren of Summerville.
When not working, she loved to cook for family and friends. In her spare time, she enjoyed gardening and taking trips to the beach and the mountains. One of her favorite things to do was spend time with her beloved 13-year-old Poodle, Teddy.
In an excerpt from the 2019 press article Sharon explained he inspiration for her fight which began in 2016;
“She made it through with a lot of help and encouragement from God, friends and family, church friends, co-workers at C.T. Lowndes. Warren’s sure the prayers are what ultimately got her through. “Had it not been for everybody sending food and cards and prayers. The prayers, you just welcome them,” she said. She’d tell everyone “You don’t have to bring me food, just say prayers.”
Whatever the reason, today Warren’s cancer doesn’t show up on tests. She’s hesitant to say “cancer-free,” because of breast cancer’s tendency to come back. But the whole ordeal has given her a new mission: helping and encouraging others.
“What I say to people now women and men, because men get it too is that if you have any indication, if you just think for a little second “Gosh, something’s not right,” you have to go to your doctor. Whether it’s your family physician or a GYN. And you say ‘I want a PET scan or an ultrasound because without that, they’re not going to be able to detect it, if it’s like mine,” she said.
And “you have to be your own advocate, fight for yourself. I kept saying something is not right. But then I’d say, ‘But Sharon, what are you going to do? Are you going to tell them how to do their job? Tell them what to do?’” Now she knows better. There are many, many kinds of breast cancer, and some (like hers) aren’t easy to diagnose.
Now, she says she’ll insist on scans every year because it’s so easy for breast cancer to come back.
“There’re so many women out there that have had it and have had it again and again. So in my mind, I’m going to live for now, thank God for keeping me on this earth and be an advocate for this,” she said. “Anybody who wants to talk to me, I will be there in a second. Because everybody was there for me and it’s something I can give back. I can tell them, ‘You can do this.’”
One friend told her something that really got her through her two years of misery. “Just keep looking for the rainbow. If you can get to that rainbow, you will feel so much better.”
But that’s not easy. “You get angry inside. You think you’re dying and you’re not going to make it. But after I went through it, I saw it. There was that rainbow she was talking about. And I knew I could do this.” It was a journey she made many times, because after each chemo, “you’re back there again, in that dark, deep black area ... and then you see the rainbow again.”
That rainbow showed up every time. And it gave her strength “because you knew it was coming. You just had to get to it.”
Today the battle is over, and she found the rainbow.
