Editor’s note: This is another in a series of stories leading up to the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life on May 17.

Janet Simmons and Debbie Felton MacInnes became friends in kindergarten, stayed friends through MacInnes’ stay in New Zealand and were still friends through MacInnes’ battle with cancer.

“Her mother and my mother were friends,” Simmons recalled. The two were in band together at Suffolk High School, and Simmons attended MacInnes’ wedding, even though she was sad that her friend would be moving to New Zealand.

Years later, MacInnes had divorced, moved back to Suffolk and was teaching at Suffolk High School, when Simmons, whose children attended there, discovered her.

“You pick up where you left off,” said Simmons, who had kept in touch with her friend through MacInnes’ mother while she was overseas. “She was one of those friends you could tell anything to, and you knew it wouldn’t go past her.”

But in 2010, MacInnes called Simmons with some frightening news.

“She told me she had breast cancer,” Simmons said. “She was going through chemo and radiation.”

Simmons’ husband was diagnosed with cancer soon afterward, so MacInnes didn’t bother her with the fact that she was losing her own fight. In August 2012, MacInnes discovered her cancer had spread to her bones. She died on Nov. 11, her birthday.

Simmons had begun making a pink quilt for MacInnes, but after she knew MacInnes wouldn’t live to see it finished, Simmons decided to raffle the 78-inch square quilt and give the proceeds to the American Cancer Society.

“She told me that was great,” Simmons said. “She died on the Sunday before I was supposed to show it to her on Monday.”

Simmons will draw the winner on May 18, the day after Relay for Life and the day of the Ruritan Founders Day celebration in Holland, where Simmons lives. Tickets cost $1 and can be obtained by calling 657-6908. A couple teachers at Lakeland High School, Ronald Daughtrey and India Meissel, also are selling tickets.

“It’s been good therapy for me to do this,” Simmons said of the quilt. “It’s in memory of her.”