Pink Ladies dress up to raise money for breast cancer research

Tomorrow afternoon, Elizabeth Montague Harrison, a Southern belle who has served jail time for extortion, will ride the “Train of the Damned” from Gloucester to Salem, cavorting with two dozen other characters with shady pasts, from Boston socialites to wealthy widows.

Harrison is a character invented by Christine Curtis, a Gloucester resident, secretary for the Endoscopy Unit at Beverly Hospital and the unofficial costumer for the group that calls itself the Pink Ladies. She’s gathered up nearly 30 fellow secretaries, nurses and technicians from the unit, along with family and friends, to don old-fashioned pink dresses, celebrate Halloween and raise some cash.

Tomorrow, they will weave through the Salem crowds in their hoop skirts and petticoats, filling pink satchels with money for the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Last year, the Pink Ladies numbered nine, all dressed in elaborate ball gowns of years gone by, from 1760 to 1915. Curtis made each of the dresses by hand, in the tiny sewing room of her Prospect Street home. Each woman invented a character that matched her dress. Then, it was just fun: a day of shopping, lunching and getting into the Salem spirit.

“We caused such a commotion last year,” Curtis said yesterday as she stood in her sewing room filled with pink dresses, hoop skirts and feathered caps. “Every time we slowed down, one camera would come out, and then there would be 20.”

The women didn’t charge for photos last year, but they began to think about what they might have made if they had.

“It was the most fun I have ever had in my life, and then we thought, we could do something greater,” said Mary Cody-Kenney, a Manchester resident and one of the nurses who participated last year. “To us, it was a no-brainer.”

Curtis calls the decision to fund-raise for breast cancer research “serendipity:” Halloween is in October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the costumes she’d made were various shades of pink, the breast cancer color, because that was the hue most available to her at a sale price.

When the women began to talk about being Pink Ladies for a cause, the idea caught on quickly. Soon, Curtis, who donates her time and tries to make every dress for under $100, was swamped with orders. She made 25 outfits this year — at a rate of one per week — for both men and women. (The men have stuck with the more traditional blue, brown and black shades.) Two of the Pink Ladies are breast cancer survivors.

Aside from her full-time job at the hospital, Curtis estimates she spent about 30 hours a week sewing, a hobby she picked up as a child from her mother and grandmother, plus time spent scouring fabric and consignment stores for bargain materials.

Curtis is accustomed to dressing up; she created a vampire ballgown for herself a few Halloweens ago, and has gone shopping downtown in a Victorian Christmas gown. But she said that others aren’t quite as comfortable, and that’s why the characters are created. The women and men have woven one another into storylines that Curtis describes as “‘Desperate Housewives’ soap opera.”

The Boston socialite is actually an orphan who has come to Salem to meet a male relative, one of the men in the group, for example. They all have one thing in common: they have done something horrible in their past (sometimes it gets racy, said Curtis) that has qualified them for a ride on the “Train of the Damned” (actually just a regular commuter rail).

It makes for interesting lunchtime conversation at the hospital, and the characters have served to loosen everyone up. Curtis even launches into her “best, worst Southern accent” when spinning the story of her character, who has bounced back from her extortion charge to make a fortune in investigative journalism.

“Everybody wants to be a Southern belle,” Curtis said. “There’s a princess in every girl.”

Curtis chooses the fabric, patterns and time period based on what kind of princess each Pink Lady wants to be. She sits them down, has them think up a name and invent a story for their character.

“Tell me about your person,” Curtis says to her subjects. “Is she flashy? Is she a born-again Christian type?”

The result is a motley collection of dresses. The magenta gown with hundreds of beads hanging from the trim and a plunging neckline is that of a madam, where a light pink dress with black geometric patterns on the trim is made for the wealthy widow named Tiffany Cartier. The Boston socialite gets an off-the-shoulder dress with a rosy hue and ruche waistline.

Curtis’ husband, John, will wear a navy captain’s suit with shiny gold buttons, and another man, whose sister-in-law was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, has a black pinstripe suit with a lacy collar and embroidered gold vest.

“We kind of teased them into it,” said Curtis of the six men brave enough to join the Pink Ladies.

When the group takes their soap opera to Salem tomorrow, they hope to create an even bigger stir than last year, raising money and awareness. They have breast cancer information cards that they’ll be handing out and will request donations from anyone asking for photos — though they’ll pose for them no matter what.

Curtis and Cody-Kenney have no idea how much they’ll raise, but they’re hoping for a couple of thousand dollars.

“Who knows how this type of fundraiser is going to do?” Curtis said. “It’s something different. It’s never been done before.”

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