BAY HEAD — For more than 20 years, local Bay Head resident Val Skinner has been dedicated to eradicating breast cancer, partnering with professionals in health care and in the golf world, and creating the Val Skinner Foundation.
For more than 20 years, Skinner has been a professional golfer with the Professional Golfers’ Association of America (PGA) and also worked for the Golf Channel after that. She did not begin the foundation until 1999, and did not start fundraising until a year later in 2000.
It all began when a colleague and friend of Skinner, Heather Farr, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Skinner said, “She was 24 when she was first misdiagnosed, and later she indeed had breast cancer. At that age it was a pretty serious, very aggressive type of form.”
As many other friends and family members would do, Skinner gathered and rallied around Farr to support her. However, as many of these stories end, Farr lost her battle four years later.
In those four years, Farr became an advocate for breast health, encouraging younger women to get screened for cancer, for ignorance could mean the difference between life and death. She also got married within that time.
“I had mentored Heather and we’d been friends for a long time…We got very close during that time. I had done some other philanthropic work that Heather supported me in the past, so the night we all gathered as Heather was exiting, she turned to me and said, ‘Val, don’t forget this happened. Make it better.’ I wrestled with that for quite some time and kept trying to address young women’s need to understand self-care and honoring the fact that our health is the most important thing in our lives, no matter what age we are,” said Skinner.
The list of accomplishments, awards and programs the Val Skinner Foundation has achieved in more than 20 years is too long to list, but Skinner has surrounded herself with professionals making meaningful contributions, advancements and achievements in the fields of cancer research and outreach.
For more information about the Val Skinner Foundation, visit valskinnerfoundation.org.
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