The message doesn't come from a hospital or a non-profit organization, it comes from 79-year-old Jack Maier, who lost his wife, Myrna, to breast cancer in February 2010.
"She was diagnosed in 1999 and had all the treatments and a mammogram done every year," Jack tells PEOPLE. "They'd always say everything was okay – like hell it was. In 2010, we found out the cancer had spread all over her body. She lived about 11 months after doctors told us it was too late."
As he mourned the loss of his beloved wife, Jack decided to turn his grief into something to help others. He used his earnings from a local lottery win to rent billboard spaces around the Milwaukee area to broadcast messages for breast cancer awareness.
"I want to honor her memory," Jack says of his wife, whom he met on a blind date and was married to for 39 years. "She was a beautiful lady. She was an outstanding wife and mother to our two young boys. I can't say enough about her."
"Now I'm just trying to help the young ladies out there – please get a test and screening done," he adds.
In the past year, Jack has rented three billboard spaces, each one costing $2,200 a month, according to the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.
Jack pays for the billboards with the money he won from a SuperCash jackpot win in 2006, which earned him a couple hundred thousand dollars.
In the past year, Jack has rented three billboard spaces, each one costing $2,200 a month, according to the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.
Jack pays for the billboards with the money he won from a SuperCash jackpot win in 2006, which earned him a couple hundred thousand dollars.
by,, http://www.people.com/article/wisconsin-man-rents-breast-cancer-billboards-after-wife-death
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