Margaret Burke had her breasts removed the first day of Roanoke College’s winter break in December 2010. “I wanted to finish the semester [first],” she says, with an Appalachian twang. Burke, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, attended the small liberal-arts college in Salem, Virginia, in the 70s, and returned to her alma mater in 1992 to teach sociology.
“What are they putting in the water at that school?” a nurse had asked her the month prior, during her initial appointment with breast surgeon Roxanne Davenport. According to the nurse, Burke was the fifth Roanoke professor with breast cancer to be referred to Dr. Davenport’s practice in that year alone.
