Dr. Deming's lessons: Living life to the fullest

The Des Moines radiation oncologist, bicyclist and global adventurer, learned early about the fun and wonder of physical activity and the outdoors. Later he realized how both can help cancer patients.

DES MOINES, Iowa — It's a long way from the small towns of Armour and Avon in southeastern South Dakota, to the 20,000-foot summit of Imja Tse in Nepal.  Or to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania or Machu Picchu in Peru.  But a couple of things that Dr. Richard Deming learned in his South Dakota boyhood have helped him decades later reach those international high points -- and to take a lot of other people along with him, including some cancer patients.

"Those little South Dakota towns were no more than 500 people, and looking back, I realize now that our family was in the lower half socio-economically," the 70-year-old Deming reflected in a three-hour interview we had several years ago. "But you know, it was back before TVs, people were in closer with each other and everybody was somebody there. As kids, we ran all over town, and everybody looked out for us.  You helped your neighbors.  I remember our family would take-in the town drunk once in a while, to give him a meal and a chance to clean up.  We shoveled the walks of an elderly neighbor woman and wouldn't have thought of accepting any money for that.  And if you had a bicycle, it seemed like the world was yours."

From that humble start, Deming has become a highly-respected radiation oncologist who heads the cancer treatment program at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines.  He has done very well in his medical career, and he's now investing a lot of his income and savings in programs that help others.  He is also a Navy veteran, mountain climber, long distance runner, bicycle racer, triathlete, RAGBRAI fun-leader and outstanding storyteller who personally leads global adventures to exotic, beautiful and sometimes rough places that challenge the body, mind and spirit.  He does that through his 13-year-old organization "Above + Beyond Cancer," which organizes the adventures for cancer survivors, patients and some additional care-givers.

In observing his fellow adventurers, Deming says, he sees a great lesson -- "how to live one's life, even in the face of death, and that's what I've come to see as sacred ground in the field of cancer." 

And there's another important thing -- sharing the stories that come from those special adventures.  "The journeys we've taken have become like pebbles, and the stories we can tell afterwards are like the ripples on the water spreading far and wide, showing a huge audience what people can do. They can inspire other people to decide, 'Why don't I get off my butt and improve my life?' "

Columnist Chuck Offenburger and Dr. Richard Deming at the recent banquet of Deming’s organization Above + Beyond Cancer. (Photo by Mary Riche)

When the two of us talked in early 2015, Deming was going to be the guest speaker at the annual banquet of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association, which I’d been active in as an officer and advocate for the 89-mile paved recreational trail in three counties just west of Des Moines. I had read and heard a lot about Deming, but had never really talked to him. As a cancer survivor myself, I was really curious about all the good this livewire doc was doing for Iowans.

Deming had already become a major proponent of trails.

"The trails are gems in central Iowa," he said. "They are great places to get exercise away from traffic on the roads, and what I really love about them is that they provide the wonderful additional benefit of constant inspiration from the beauty of nature as it evolves through the seasons.

"Trails are an important way for society and the various governmental agencies to promote physical activity and enhance the quality of our lives."

He said he always loved the outdoors while growing up in South Dakota, but he wasn't particularly athletic as a boy and his focus on fitness came later. 

"My father was a manager of grain elevators, and we got transferred from one small town to another," he said. "By the time I was in fifth grade, he had been transferred to the town of Madison, which had about 5,000 people, and we felt like we'd moved into a major city!"

He was in a class of about 150 at Madison High School, and it was there that “good teachers helped me recognize my aptitude as a student, particularly a love for science and math." He also excelled in speech and debate.  He won an academic scholarship to South Dakota State University, becoming the first in his family to attend college.  He had a double major in chemistry and microbiology, with a minor in math, and in 1976 graduated and headed to medical school at Creighton University in Omaha. 

He began to recognize that it's a big world out there. 

"Coming from where I came from, Omaha seemed like one ritzy, almost glamorous city," Deming said,  "But then I started meeting my classmates, and it seemed like half of them were kids from California, and they thought Omaha was kind of a cow town."

It was at Creighton that he discovered a love for frequent, rigorous exercise.  That came because med school students were given free access to the university's new fitness center, and he spent noon hours playing basketball and running on an indoor track. "By the end of my first year of med school, I was starting to enter half-marathon races, and I gained an understanding how important physical activity was to my quality of life," he said.

During his second year of med school, his mother Odetta Deming died from lung cancer.  "She was 52 years old when she died, and my father (Bob) died at about that same age from a heart attack," he said.  "Both Mom and Dad were smokers, which was common back then, so common it wasn't even really talked about as a health concern."

Did his mother's cancer experience influence his eventual medical specialty?  "Yes, but I think it was more subconsciously than directly," Deming said. "Cancer was so feared at that time, and there wasn't much effective treatment for it.  It was something people just didn't talk openly about.  I never had a conversation with Mom about what she was going through, even though by then I was a young adult.  Now I wish I had, of course.  But back then, you didn't really talk about an illness like that."

He had qualified for a U.S. Navy scholarship which paid his med school tuition as well as providing a $200 monthly stipend for living expenses -- and that also determined his immediate future. After graduating from Creighton in 1980, he was assigned to the Naval Hospital in San Diego for an internship in internal medicine, and he also began training in under-seas medicine for eventual medical work in submarines.  That included being taught scuba diving.  "We doctors weren't taught scuba diving so that we could do it, but rather to get us ready to be able to treat divers."

His first regular duty assignment was in Hawaii with a unit of paratroopers and divers.  "They were super-fit individuals, and they helped me put new emphasis on my own fitness," Deming said.

In 1987, he did a residency in radiation oncology at the University of California in San Francisco, then started a two-year final Navy assignment on the medical staff at the National Cancer Institute and the National Naval Medical Center, both located in Bethesda, Maryland.

In 1989, he joined Mercy in Des Moines just as it was starting its cancer treatment program.  He has been in Des Moines ever since.

Deming said that in his first 10 years in the area, "I didn't really get engaged in the community.  I had a lot of friends scattered all over the country, from different military assignments and school, so I traveled a lot to do things with them.  Around here, I was sort of a solo athlete.  I continued to run some marathons, and I'd do long bike rides, generally by myself, on weekends -- often 100 miles on Saturday and another 100 miles on Sunday.  But eventually, I was becoming like a stick-figure of a long-distance runner, and I decided I needed to add some resistance training.  So I started going to the YMCA, and that's when I developed a real community of friends here.  At first we didn't have anything in common except that we'd all be standing outside the Y before 5 a.m., waiting for it to open.  But soon, we were working out together, doing all kinds of activities together, and we still are today." 

They call themselves "the Y-Rats."

One of them, Debbie Avitt, said Deming "is the BEST friend ever! Dick is funny, fun to be around, gets his jabs in, and enjoys cutting loose. His enthusiasm, energy and zest for life are contagious.

"One of the most amazing things about him is he never hesitates to help someone," she continued.  "Dick is approached by people everywhere he goes -- at the Y, on the street, at concerts, triathlons, outdoor venues, everywhere. Our Y-Rat friends have watched this time and time again and he never hesitates to offer his kindness, compassion and understanding to support and help in whatever way he can. He truly is an angel in disguise."

Sometimes physical activity can catch up to you! Dr. Richard Deming shows off the brace he’s wearing on the right arm he recently broke leading a group of cancer survivors and caregivers hiking the north end of the Appalachian Trail. Mary Riche, wife of columnist Chuck Offenburger, shows off the boot helping her heal a broken bone in her right foot, after an in-home accident. (Photo by Judith Conlin.)

Deming has never married and because of that, he says he is able to give more time to other people and causes than he'd be able to otherwise.  "What started as a career in health care for me has become what I think of as a kind of ministry of healing," he said. "It takes the kind of commitment personally and professionally that would probably not be as possible if I were married and had a family."

Many of the good works he has become known for have happened over the past 25 years.

That was also when he started mountain climbing.  He said he'd done some climbing in the Cascade Mountains of the northwestern U.S., as well as in Alaska and Canada.  But in 2000, he joined a team of five climbers who did a climb in the Himalayas in Nepal, and he was really taken by not only the beauty but also the spirituality of such high, remote places.

He was raised Catholic “and I've always been grateful that I grew up with a faith life that had that kind of tradition and ceremony. But I now have a more holistic approach to spirituality than what my theological upbringing gave me.  I've come to believe there are many ways to find God.  I love being in a sacred space that acknowledges something bigger than ourselves.  I've experienced that in big Catholic cathedrals, in Tibetan monasteries, at Machu Picchu and other places like that."

His thinking about cancer and the treatment of it has evolved, too.

"We've made tremendous headway," Deming said. "There are now 15 million cancer survivors in this country.  Not all are cured, but we've learned that it's a chronic disease that can be managed to provide people with many more years of life.  And yet, this year alone 600,000 people will die of cancer -- and about two-thirds of those are from cancers that are preventable. We need to make sure everyone understands that. The most common causes are tobacco, and right behind that come inactivity, obesity and poor nutrition.   We can do something about all of those.  For example, there are good studies now that show that if you engage in physical activity while you are going through cancer treatment, it reduces the impact of the side effects from the treatment, and it also has some positive impact on treatment outcomes."

That's why for years, he has led "spinning classes" on stationary exercycles at the YMCA Health Living Center in West Des Moines for cancer patients and survivors who want to start into exercise programs.

He said the stories of his patients have taught him a lot about this.

"When you or your loved ones are diagnosed with cancer, it reminds you right away of your mortality,"  he said. "You acknowledge that you are going to die some day -- we all are -- but you don't know when that is going to be.  That can be sort of liberating.  That experience can be the bump in the road that gives you a jolt, then inspires you to pursue your dreams.  It can be like a second opportunity to live your life.  It can be like you're now going to write your autobiography and make it something that other people will want to read. It's a time when you can engage your whole mind, body and spirit, and live your life with purpose, passion and compassion.

"And that is the essence of our organization 'Above + Beyond Cancer'," which was established in early 2011.

Deming is its founder and CEO.  The first executive director was Charlie Wittmack, the former Iowan who summnited Mount Everest twice -- first in 2003 and again in 2011.  The two men had become close friends, initially because of their common interest in mountain climbing. 

They talked about how Above + Beyond Cancer might take a group of cancer survivors on a trek to the Everest Base Camp, to meet Wittmack there before he began his climb to the summit in May of 2011.  They did that.

They made 2012 even bigger -- starting with a group climb of Kilimanjaro in Africa in January. Then in June, there was a team of eight bicycle riders who participated as a relay in the annual "Race Across America," which they completed in six days, 21 hours and 17 minutes.  Deming was one of the riders and says now, "I really have no idea how we did it in that short of time, except that I think our support team worked harder than we riders did."  In the fall of 2012, a team of 40 survivors and caregivers, ranging in age from 22 to 73, from coast to coast climbed Imja Tse, the 20,000-foot peak in Nepal.

Wittmack eventually left the organization, moved to North Carolina for a few years, then back to Des Moines where he is practicing law. He was succeeded as executive director first by Brad Anderson, then Christopher Goodale, and since earlier this year Alissa McKinney.

Deming said he “owes a lot” to Wittmack, “for the way he inspired the start of Above + Beyond Cancer.  I think we both became believers in how important it is having a higher purpose in whatever you are doing.

"I'm not interested in developing an adventure travel agency for cancer survivors," he told me back in 2015. "But if you could see how the lives of our people have been transformed by these experiences, and then see how the lives are changed of so many other people back home following us, you know the importance of what we're doing."

The challenges, the opportunities, the organization and the inspiring stories all continue to grow today, under the leadership of Deming. In the fall of 2024, I was asked to be guest speaker at the “Celebrate” banquet of Above + Beyond Cancer.”

I told the crowd that although Dr. Deming never actually treated me in my 15-year cancer journey — which has had me in remission since my stem cells transplant in the fall of 2010 — I feel like his examples and his philosophies on life, living and spirituality have been as important to my health as any treatment or medication I had.

“Dr. Richard Deming,” I told the big crowd, “may well be the most interesting and inspiring Iowan of our era.”

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You can comment on this column below or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.

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An earlier form of this story was first-published on the website of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association in 2015. It got lost in scattered computer files until Chuck Offenburger was asked to speak at the 2024 banquet of Above + Beyond Cancer. In doing some preparation, the columnist stumbled across the story again. He thought it was still a good profile of Dr. Richard Deming. So, he updated it and now re-publishes it here.