- — Jamie and Danielle Harmon have lived a near-perfect life as a married couple. No arguments in the 20 years they’ve known one another. They have two fine sons, Gus, 11, and Hopper, 2. Both artists, they’re lives seem to complement one another; she, teaching art at Valdosta State University; he, the former curator at the Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts who has spent the past year watching their children, attending classes and taking photographs. Since moving to Valdosta in 2003, the Harmons became part of the community throughout many levels of society.

“Twenty years, never a fight. Never a cross word,” Jamie Harmon says by telephone. “It’s all been fine until this happened.”

“This” is cancer.

Danielle Harmon has been battling melanoma cancer for the past few months.

In May, a CAT scan spotted lesions on her brain, found spots in her torso. During the summer months, the Harmons often travel to Memphis, the city where they met 20 years ago.

In Memphis, they received a more complete report of Danielle’s condition: 14 lesions in the brain. Cancer detected in her lymph nodes, spleen, legs, torso, lungs.

The lesions on her brain are too small for surgery. Danielle has undergone brain radiation, a round of treatment that can only be administered once. They wait to hear if the radiation has done its job.

Danielle is undergoing rounds of chemotherapy. The Harmons hope to travel to Little Rock, Ark., for a new melanoma treatment.

For the Harmons’ Valdosta friends, the cancer news has been especially difficult. With the Harmons in Memphis, their friends here have felt helpless.

“Everybody in Valdosta has asked how they can help,” says Blake Pearce, head of the Valdosta State University Department of Art. “We can’t take them food, or offer to watch the kids for them, or even just sit and visit. They’re in Memphis.”

With Danielle on a leave of absence from VSU, the Harmons have settled in Memphis. In mid-July, Jamie and son Gus returned to Valdosta to pack up the family’s belongings and move out of their house.  

With the family gone and so far away, Pearce knew that at least Valdosta friends could help defray some of the costs involved in Danielle’s battle. The VSU art department and the Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts have established a bank account to benefit the Harmons through First State Bank.

Meanwhile, South Georgia friends stay in touch with the Harmons by phone, through Facebook, and by reading Danielle’s blog entries.

Early in her treatment, she started a blog, chronicling her experiences and treatment. She shares stories from her life. She writes about Jamie, Gus, and Hopper, as well as other family and friends. She remains upbeat. Danielle sprinkles humorous observations, stories and asides liberally throughout the blog, whether sharing a story about babysitting a friend’s child or discussing the effects of a new treatment. She is brutally honest about her ordeal with no trace of bitterness.

On the phone, Jamie shares the story of how he and Danielle met 20 years ago.

He worked in a book store. She worked in an arts supply store. Both located in the Mall of Memphis.

They had not yet met, not really, but they had noticed each other, though Jamie never expected Danielle to be the person anonymously sending him Richard Brautigan poetry.

But she was.

The poems arrived under the book shop’s door, addressed to Jamie. Given the stationary resembled a stock sold by the book store, another employee didn’t notice Jamie’s name on the missive and placed it with the other inventory. Jamie discovered this poem addressed to him while inventorying stationary.

Very strange and curious.

He had no idea these poems were coming from Danielle. As a young man barely out of his teens, Jamie says he had a handful of friends. He believed one of those friends was playing a joke on him. He never expected the poems came from the tall, blonde from the art supply store.

He was pleasantly surprised when he learned they did.

A relationship developed. Three months later, they moved in together. Five years later, they married.

They developed a relationship where they understood one another, where they could be themselves as a couple and as individuals. The Harmons, Blake Pearce says, are people unaffected by social boundaries.

Who else could spend the morning with a person traveling through town with a puppet and then have lunch with the president of VSU? Pearce asks, referring to the Harmons never seeming to know a stranger whether they be a person broken down on the side of the road or the person who makes a city’s wheels turn.

Now, when the Harmons could use some help on the side of life’s road, their friends and co-workers hope folks will remember the family.

HARMON FUND

• Donations may be made to the Harmon family through the James T. & Danielle Harmon Donation Account at any First State Bank location.

• For Danielle Harmon’s Bon Courage blog, visit http://danielleharmon.com