Bradenton’s ‘Sixty-Sixahs’ hit the road again

Last summer, six women from Bradenton took off on a cross-country road trip. They traveled the length of Route 66, from Chicago to the west coast.

It was a “bucket list” trip for one of the women, who dubbed themselves the “Sixty-Sixahs.”

“We touched both the signs, at the beginning and the end of Route 66,” said Julie Rothfeld. “We stuck our toes in the Pacific Ocean.”

It was pretty much 2,500 miles of non-stop laughter, Rothfeld said, but for one member of the group it had a profound effect.

Patty Virgilio — she was the one who had especially wanted to take the trip — is a cancer patient. She is being treated for stage 4 pancreatic cancer. For six months after the trip she was able to forgo her radiation treatments.

“Cancer hates laughter,” Rothfeld said. “She tells us this often, and it seems to be true.”

Now the same group is setting off on a new adventure, driving along the the length of the Mississippi River. On Thursday they’re flying to Chicago, and from there they’ll head south in a rented SUV they’re calling Sparky II. (The vehicle they drove on the Route 66 trip was the original Sparky).

Rothfeld will continue to chronicle the group’s adventures on dontforgetwinonablog.com, a blog named after a line from the Bobby Troup song “Route 66.”

That first trip was mostly for Virgilio, who is now dealing with her third bout with cancer. This trip, she says, is for other people she’ll encounter along the way who are also facing cancer. One of the stops on the trip will be at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., where she’ll meet pediatric cancer patients and try to help inspire them to have hope.

“I’m going to show them that the impossible can become possible,” she said.

On Tuesday evening, the Shake Pit on Manatee Avenue hosted a going away party for Virgilio, Rothfeld and the other four members of the Sixty-Sixahs — Viriglio’s sister, Jane Trinci, and their friends Trudi Diamant, Jean Gurucharri and Patti Tibbetts.

Virgilio had a chemotherapy treatment Monday, but she says she’s up for the trip. She’s feeling better, she said, than she did before the first trip. When she comes home, she’s facing at least six more months of chemotherapy.

At Wednesday’s party, the Sixty-Sixahs wore shirts with a picture of a Mississippi riverboat. Many other people wore shirts that read “Team Patty” on the front and “Let’s strike out cancer” on the back. Those came from a Tampa Bay Rays game earlier this month, during which Virgilio was honored by Moffitt Cancer Center. She had her picture displayed on the scoreboard and she was given a baseball autographed by a Rays players.

As for this trip, Virgilio said she’s humbled that five of her friends would put their lives on hold to go on these trips with her.

“There’s power in the number one,” she said. “But take with you these women, Jane Trinci, Trudi Diamant, Jean Gurucharri, Patti Tibbetts and Julie Rothfeld, and you’ve multiplied the power of one five times.”

This story was originally published September 26, 2017 at 8:06 PM with the headline "Bradenton’s ‘Sixty-Sixahs’ hit the road again."