Johnny Miller’s 1946 rat rod.

Three decades past in the mid-1990s, Dale and Johnny Miller weren’t taking part in Relay For Life as firsthand cancer survivors. Through their highly active employee team, at what was then known as Speedring (now General Dynamics), they were doing it for family and loved ones who’d themselves dealt with the disease.

Now the couple, longtime friends and Speedring coworkers before finally tying the knot 27 years ago, has a cancer story of their own — two stories, in fact: one for each of them.

Dale was diagnosed with breast cancer in January of 2012, undergoing a single mastectomy and treatment that revealed, in an unrelated diagnosis, an even more serious cancer in her ovary. “I had breast cancer, and had surgery the next month,” said Dale. “The thing about mine, thankfully, was that it was zero-stage breast cancer, and when I started treatment, my breast cancer marker was just normal.

“Then, a couple of months into checking, my breast cancer marker started going up — which is very unusual. By the fall of 2012, the doctor said ‘This is too weird: I’m going to do a PET [positron emission tomography] scan,’ and my abdomen was glowing with ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer is never found at an early stage, and so because it helped us detect that, I always look at my breast cancer as kind of a blessing.”

Johnny, meanwhile, endured a more recent yearlong bout of intensive treatment for a form of cancer equally concerning: colorectal cancer, detected in December of 2020 and treated with a grueling slate of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy that took a full 12 months to finish.

“The whole year of 2021, I was in treatments,” said Johnny, who’s remained cancer-free since then. “I did 30 rounds of radiation and chemo at the same time. I had major surgery, and then I did three and-a-half months of chemo. It was bad, but there were three or four major things that really got me through my struggles.”

In addition to the Millers’ faith, trusted doctors (Johnny can’t praise local general surgeon Dr. Don Marecle and oncologist Dr. Vincent Karolewics enough), and, of course, mutual spousal support, one of the couple’s most reliable pillars through each of their cancer ordeals was the network of local friends they’d cultivated through years of involvement in Cullman’s Relay For Life.

Back in their early Speedring days, current Relay chair Helen Allen was also a Speedring employee, Relay team member, and friend — and the close-knit personal connections that past Relay events already had established helped the Millers face each uphill climb in the knowledge they were never alone.

“When my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, I told her, ‘Clean your desk out and go home,” said Johnny, recalling Dale’s first diagnosis while still a Speedring employee. “But she and her friends, staying busy at work, kept her mind occupied and not all the time thinking about her situation — and that really helped her.”

“I saw that in her, and she showed me a lot by her having those friends and that support,” he adds, reflecting on his own year-long cancer ordeal. “That’s the biggest thing with cancer: You have to have a good support base, and we did.”

“On another note,” said Dale, “One good thing about having had cancer is, you can minster to other people who are going through it, and Johnny’s been doing that for the past few months. Because of your unique situation, you’re able to help other people out … and it’s also helped him out. You minister to others and forward that on to other people — and that’s really what Relay For Life is about.”

In the depths of Johnny’s worst treatment days, days filled with sickness, fatigue and few obvious enticements toward optimism, he found that applying one’s will to adversity’s worst moments helps close the distance between hope and despair that prayer, friendship and the Millers’ strong marital bond already had helped to significantly bridge.

“I had this project building a 1946 rat rod, and there was time when, during my treatments, I could hardly walk the two steps from my recliner to the dining room table. But there were other times when I’d have a little spurt of energy, and even though I couldn’t drag a wrench, I’d sit and look at that old truck and daydream about finishing it — and it helped me get my mind off the cancer. That, and the Lord’s help, and the friendships, and my wife being the kinds of person she is, all got me through it.

“But,” he added, “the mind can heal a lot of things. The thing with cancer is, if you ever give up, then you’re done — regardless of your diagnosis or your outcome. You can’t just sit down and give up. You have to fight. The Lord gave us the most intelligent instrument known to mankind — our minds — and you have to use it.”

After years of being cancer free, Dale’s recently been diagnosed with breast cancer in her remaining tissue. A decade after her first mastectomy, she’s in the process of scheduling her second one — though her cheerful spirit, buoyed by her husband and support base, betrays far less alarm than one might expect.

“I’m 72, and Johnny will be 70 this August. I’m proud to be alive at 72. We still feel good — that’s a plus,” she said. “We’ve maybe lost a little bit of vim and vigor — who doesn’t — but we have each other, and we try. We’re both believers that attitude plays a huge role; a positive attitude, and your faith. It’s already gotten us through a lot, I’m telling you.”

This year, when Relay For Life hosts its 30th Anniversary Cullman event at Depot Park, Dale and Johnny say they’ll be there, showing off the couple’s beloved classic car at the accompanying vintage auto show while also showing their support for cancer survivors, their families, and those whose lives the disease has sadly claimed.

“We’re gonna bring the old rat rod out,” said Johnny. “We’ll reconnect with people we haven’t seen in a long time, and I guess we’ll even wear the [Relay] T-shirt again. You really can’t say enough about the support we all can have for each other. It really, really helps to know that you have so many friends.”