Public servant plows through private disease
She remembers it so vividly, the tingling sensation in her legs, the visits to the doctors, and finally the diagnostic test results, which she knew were bad when the physician called out to the technician: ''Tell Jane Gumble to come in here immediately."
''He told me: 'You have a brain tumor, and you can't drive yourself home,' " Gumble said in an interview last week. She had been diagnosed with anaplastic astrocytoma, the term for small clusters of cancer-like cells scattered across a third of her brain.
''I did some research on the Internet," Gumble said. ''The prognosis was a life expectancy of six to 18 months," she said. There is no known cure. That was seven years, three rounds of chemotherapy, a month of twice-a-day radiation treatments, and three surgical procedures ago.
Her last operation was to remove a cyst on her brain that had been caused by the treatments themselves.
Through it all, Jane Wallis Gumble has never retreated. She not only lives with the disease every day; she has missed precious few days on the job, gaining praise as the state's director of housing and community development. The only official of her rank to have been held over through four Republican administrations, Gumble is a survivor in more ways than one.
''One could argue: What am I doing?" said Gumble, who is now 50. ''I'm in state service, with a brain tumor. Why am I coming to work every day? If I don't do it -- and my work is so much of who I am -- it will feel like I've given up the fight. I will not give up the fight."
Gumble's neurologist, Dr. Fred Hochberg of Massachusetts General Hospital, said he has learned more than medical lessons from a patient who he says ''never loses focus on what's important."
Her will and ability to live a normal life ''is unique," said Hochberg, who estimates that he has seen more than 5,000 brain tumor patients in 25 years. Fewer than 15 of those have suffered the rare type of tumor that afflicts Gumble, he said, and she has outlived by more than four years the longest survivor he has treated for such a tumor.
Tests have found that Gumble's tumors has been inactive for almost a year, Hochberg said. ''Her prognosis now is better than when she was first diagnosed," he said.
Gumble's fight is not limited to battling disease. She wins high marks from advocates for a passionate support of affordable housing programs that were neglected or low priorities under her first three bosses, Governors William F. Weld, A. Paul Cellucci, and Jane M. Swift.
Mitt Romney, the latest governor to reappoint her, however, has made housing production a centerpiece of ''smart growth" development policies designed to keep the Massachusetts economy competitive by moderating the state's exorbitant housing costs.
The State's housing budget is less than half of what it was in 1989, yet advocates of subsidized housing see Gumble as an ally, not an enemy.
''She's absolutely dedicated," said Eleanor G. White, president of Housing Partners Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in affordable housing. ''It sounds a little trite, but she's been steadfast in her advocacy for affordable housing programs, including some years when she was the only person in the administration advocating for it."
When officials in Lowell and Fall River moved to raze public housing developments, Gumble objected. She was overruled by the state Legislature twice, in 2000 and 2002. When suburban lawmakers massed for an all-out assault on the state's landmark antisnob-zoning law that encouraged high-density developments, Gumble defended the law and enacted regulations to curb excesses and slow efforts to gut the law, known as Chapter 40B.
''Jane's just a champion," said state Representative Kevin G. Honan, a Brighton Democrat and chairman of the Committee on Housing and Urban Development. ''She's courageous and an outstanding public servant who just digs in on these issues and fights to the end."
Gumble's department, with more than 200 employees, oversees housing and local development programs, coordinating with transportation, environmental, and energy agencies under the new Office for Commonwealth Development and its secretary, Douglas I. Foy. Foy didn't know her when Romney lured him from the Conservation Law Foundation to refocus state development policies. He quickly joined Gumble's fan club.
''Jane is one of the most decent and honorable people I've ever met," Foy said. ''Of all the staffs in the agencies of Commonwealth Development, hers was the most tightly knit. . .and the most effective in both pursuing their mission and supporting her."
Gumble's husband of 21 years, David B. Schroeder, said her regard for her staff is a reason she has stayed on the job through the illness. ''There are times when she's thought the easiest thing might be to walk away from it, but she respects and is very protective of her staff," said Schroeder, a builder of expensive custom houses.
The couple, who have no children, lives in Stow, a town of about 6,000 near Boxborough and the Interstate 495 belt, more noted for orchards and golf courses than for affordable housing. It's a fact she often notes in public. They reside in an 85-year-old colonial home on 1.4 acres.
Gumble took a circuitous route to her position. Raised in tiny Paupack , Pa., she had a fifth-grade class of 10 students, half of them her cousins. Her father, who suffered a fatal heart attack six months after the Gumble's diagnosis, had a lumber and home building company.
''Sometimes, I think my father made a deal," Gumble says of his death rather than hers.
At Lehigh University in nearby Bethlehem, she majored in fine arts, with a minor in business (''I realized I'd starve to death with a fine arts degree. I had no talent.") She moved to Boston, and was awarded a law degree in 1981 from Boston University School of Law.
She met her future husband waiting hours at a fogged-in Logan Airport, for a flight that was eventually canceled, and accepted Schroeder's offer of a ride to Brighton. ''I did everything my mother told me not to with a man I had just met," she recalled with a shrug.
Gumble was a partner and counsel at Awdeh and Co., a real estate development firm, when she followed a co-worker to the Weld administration in 1991.
Though she has worked in a series of Republican administrations and has contributed to the gubernatorial campaigns of her bosses, Gumble is not enrolled in a political party. ''I think I voted for John Kerry," the Democrat, in the last presidential election, she said.
In the Weld administration, Gumble started in the department's public housing division, and in 1996, Weld elevated her to Cabinet-level rank. A year and a half after her promotion, Gumble received the horrible news about her health.
As determined as she is to maintain normalcy in her life, Gumble nevertheless acknowledges a toll.
''I've suffered some memory loss, enough that it bothers me," she said. ''I had a phenomenal memory. The worst is short-term memory loss," a result of the cystectomy in 2000.
Gumble's tumor affects ''supporting cells, not the thinking cells in the brain," Dr. Hochberg said.
Foy, her boss, doesn't worry about that. ''She's got a staff that can remember the details. Jane's the keeper. She's got the vision and the overall leadership."
In the seven years since her diagnosis (''Seven years and three days," she corrects her interviewer), Gumble has missed work for extended periods only twice. During what her husband called a ''devastating" round of chemotherapy, she took two months off in the summer of 2000. (''I was just exhausted," she recalled. ''It takes a lot of energy to fight, to live.")
Soon thereafter, she took two more months of medical leave, following the surgery to remove the brain cyst.
By arrangement with the governor's office, Gumble's salary of $108,000 is prorated to $97,200, to allow two days off per month for medical reasons, said her spokesman, Philip C. Hailer.
When she isn't working, she and David like to take long bicycle rides. They've taken two bike-riding vacations in Italy and each year lead a group of about two dozen riders in the annual Ride for Research, which raises funds for the Watertown-based Brain Tumor Society.
Gumble has no plans to slow down or give up her work, though she realizes that day may come. ''I always thought it would be sort of sad if they wrote something in my obituary that said, ''She worked 'til the last day,' " Gumble said.
Living with a life-threatening illness ''is something I don't ever lose sight of," she said, but she does not dwell on it.
''I'm always thinking about what I need to do next," she said. ''I am not a seizing-the-moment kind of gal."
