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For the past four years, Dave DeMarco of the Saratoga National Bank & Trust Co. has worn pink every day of October as part of the American Cancer Society’s Real Men Wear Pink campaign.
Elizabeth Hunter, Senior Manager, Community Development for the ACS office in Latham, which handles the events in New York’s capital region, said that the campaign runs Sept. 1 - Oct. 31.
She said “so this Real Men Wear Pink campaign starts September 1 for fundraising and it goes through October 31. October obviously is breast cancer awareness month, so the guys fundraise from September 1 to October 1, and then they have to wear pink every day in October.”
According to the ACS’s website, breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in American women except for skin cancers, and “the average risk of a woman in the United States developing breast cancer sometime in her life is about 13%.”
It continued by estimating that over a quarter of a million more cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in 2019, and over 40,000 women will die from it.
“When we started our campaign, we were looking for individuals who are very visible across the capital region,” Hunter said. “People who are passionate about making a difference, who have a platform they can leverage to raise funds. So when we were picking out those people that would represent the capitol region, Dave was just one of those people that we knew would make it a success if he was on the team.”
For Demarco in particular, Hunter said that she did not remember exactly how the partnership began, but that it was likely due to him being a community leader.
She also mentioned that it has been interesting seeing his wardrobe of pink clothes change and increase over the years, since DeMarco and the other bank employees wear pink every day for the month.
As Hunter said, “Dave wearing pink every day at the bank and using that to spread awareness is just a powerful thing for Saratoga. He definitely has become known as the pink guy in Saratoga because, obviously being the CEO of a bank and wearing a full pink suite is not the average sight when you walk into a bank.”
She continued by saying that due to the odd sight, DeMarco helps to start conversations about why he is wearing such a strange outfit, which leads to more people knowing about breast cancer and the Real Men Wear Pink campaign. Last year, the Saratoga Real Men Wear Pink campaign came in second in the country out of 330 competing campaigns in terms of fundraising, raising $264,000. Hunter said that currently they are in the top 10 for the 2019 rankings.
For more information, visit the ACS website at www.cancer.org.
