RICHMOND, Va. -- For decades, Richmond news photographer Regina Boone has told compelling stories through the lens of her camera. But these days, the Richmond Free Press photographer is telling her own story.
In June 2023, Boone was planning her September wedding when she received some news she didn’t expect: she had breast cancer.
"My mind just started spinning for a second, and I was like, okay, get it together. It'll be fine. We'll beat this. I'll beat this," she said.
An annual mammogram discovered Boone's tumor.
A month later, she underwent a lumpectomy.
Before starting chemotherapy and radiation, she had one request for her doctors — to put off treatment until after her wedding.
Boom said she needed to enjoy that celebration for her soul.
"I think that I fed off of that happiness, that joy, that energy," she said.
Days after her wedding, Boone's rounds of treatment began. Sickness and weakness soon followed.
"I really wasn't feeling myself. I was sleeping a lot. There's no way I could be in the streets," she said.
Boone went on medical leave for months, stepping away from the Richmond Free Press, the independent paper her father, Raymond Boone, started in 1992.
Her father died of pancreatic cancer in 2014.
"In my head, I thought I had checked the box and had been cleared for so many years," Regina Boone said of her cancer journey.
In 1974, when she was just four years old, Regina Boone complained of intense stomach pain and was rushed to St. Mary's Hospital.
"They opened me up to do an emergency appendectomy," she recalled. "They found a mass over my small ovary."
The little girl was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
She was treated at Massey Cancer Center, which had just opened in Richmond.
"My dad was the editor at the Afro-American newspaper, so, of course, he still had to work and meet deadlines. My mom was off and stayed in the hospital with me," she recalled.
"I do remember going to school bald," she added. "I remember Kojak was on TV, and I recall some people making comments that maybe I looked like Kojak."
She can’t forget the day her dad came home with a wig.
"I refused to wear it. I was like, 'Heck no.' Even back then, and even this time around, I wore no wigs. I just rocked it bald and embraced it," she said.
Fifty years later, Regina Boone is still embracing whatever comes.
"I have a renewed respect for life. I have a renewed respect for myself and what I can get through," she said.
Boone is now cancer-free.
She recently joined Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center’s advisory board as Massey celebrates its 50th anniversary.
CBS 6 will air a special next month to commemorate the anniversary.
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