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Closer to free - Guilford resident part of Smilow flash mob video on web, TV

April 4th, 2013

The hum of the train station is broken as a young girl wearing a Closer to Free T-Shirt stands up in the front of the station and sings, acapella, “Everyone wants to live.”

People reading newspapers or just waiting for their trains are startled as singer after singer, all wearing the same white T-Shirt join her. “Everyone wants to live” is followed by cascades of recorded music pouring from the speakers that triggers dozens of singers and dancers and cancer survivors to clap and sing or lip sync lyrics to a the Smilow Cancer Hospital’s “Closer to Free” flash mob video that soon has the room rocking.
Some of them brandish signs reading “I am a breast cancer survivor” or a “lung cancer survivor” or a “melanoma survivor” as they sway and dance. One of the dancers does a blackflip, capturing the exuberance of a production that would be broadcast by NBC on the Super Bowl during commercial breaks, less than three months later three different times.

Enter Amy Stinton, a 41-year-old melanoma survivor who lives on in Guilford with her wife of three years, Regina Sullivan.

She is clapping and singing with the rest of the flash mob participants, her green-blue eyes shining, her face alive with excitement. She is tall, slim and well-coordinated, displaying the athletic grace that goes with being a physical education teacher at the ACES Thomas Edison Middle School in Meriden where ever since she was stricken with melanoma two years ago, she earned the nickname of “Sunshine” because of her positive attitude.

Now the dancers are whirling and clapping and repeating “Closer to Free” as the video heads for a climactic finale.

“La la la la, la lahhhhh,” they sing in unison as videographers with hand-held cameras wander among them. “La la la la la lahhhhh.” When the last prolonged note finally fades, the usual flash mob ending – where participants in the extravaganzas that are sweeping the world and nation walk away without a backward glance – is thrown to the winds.
All the dancers and singers and cancer survivors, including Stinton – overcome with emotion – hug one another, laughing and smiling and what they are feeling, what they have just created ,spills onto the video images before finally fading to black.

“It was the experience of a lifetime,” Stinton said as she sat in her comfortable ranch home last week, her partner at her side. “We did it in just two takes.”

She explained that the producers and director of the video told the cancer survivors and some Smilow Cancer Hospital doctors and nurses simply to “get into it.

That was not the case with the Fairfield Children’s Choir and the Meriden dance studio group that practiced the routine and pre-recorded some of it well in advance.

“We were told to clap and while some of us lip synched, many of us did sing along with the singers, including me.”

Now she vaulted back in time to a phone call she received from her dermatologist. She had visited him after finding what she described as a small bump on the back of her left thigh. He had ordered a biopsy and days later, she picked up the phone and was told the test came back and showed she had melanoma.

“When I heard the word melanoma – skin cancer – I got a pit in my stomach. I did some research on the Internet and was scared. And I have to say that from that moment to this, Regina has been my rock; she always puts me first.”

Sullivan smiled. “She also says that but she has always been a positive, can do person and this was no exception.”

Sullivan, the president of the Guilford Teacher’s Association and a physical education and health education teacher at Guilford High School, said the most difficult moment came when after surgery removed what turned out to be stage three melanoma and the original tests came back showing that the lymph nodes around Stinton’s groin were cancer free, a second, more sophisticated test revealed they were not.

“That was tough,” Sullivan said.

Stinton and Sullivan got married shortly after gay marriage became legal in Connecticut and as they played with their two white Havenese dogs, Sneaker and Rudy, you would never guess the long-term drama they are facing together.

“Closer to Free gave me a chance to express what I really feel deep inside me,” Stinton said. “The kids at school and many people I bump into keep telling me: “Hey, I saw you on the Super Bowl.”

“That is gratifying but what I hope is that the video makes people aware that if they have checkups regularly and don’t give in to the fear that accompanies cancer, they can truly be free.

”I know I am.”

Closer to Free video