To the editor:

This isn’t just a letter to the editor, it is a message to all Grant County.

I’ve just returned from St. Charles Hospital in Bend, Oregon. Why? To visit my daughter-in-law, Kathie Elliott. Why? The doctors have just removed half of Kathie’s right lung. Why? Because Kathie smoked all her life. Why? And this is where it is hard to understand.

Kathie has been a nurse all her life. She has been a head nurse at hospitals, an ER nurse, the county health nurse for Lake County, the county health officer for Lake County. She was in charge of the nurses’ staff at an Oregon State women’s prison and more recently, with the medical staffs of the correctional depts. of Eastern Oregon State prisons.

With all these associations with medical problems that she has seen that were attributed to cigarettes and smoking in her professional life, it makes one wonder just what it takes for a person to get rid of these killers. There has to be a way. Kathie said, “Dad, I know you were unhappy with the fact that I smoked, but I’ll quit now. They took my lungs.”

Yes, Kathie found a way to quit. But it needn’t be that way. Think about it.

Dean Elliott

Canyon City