Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • 10

1 A PROFILE IN COURAGE EGAN Continued from Preceding Page fj if! the credit office at J.C. Penney and was known by her married name, Fran Weston. As commissioner for girls sports in the Moss Athletic Association, she saw needs in her neighborhood not being met. Michael McAllister had bumped off the incumbent Democrat in his 1980 race for state representative in the Northeast district and figured to win that fall. Then he went up against "the girl from the neighborhood." Egan, a well-known face in Wissinoming, was McAllister's 25-year-old Republican opponent.

"She just dedicated herself to that election," McAllister says two decades later. "That was an. uphill battle for her. She was absolutely one of the most driven, ambitious human beings I've ever met." The Peteraf family mom, dad, brothel's, sisters, aunts, uncles all worked on the campaign. "We just outworked him," Egan said.

"I think people liked my profile. I was a girl from the neighlor-hood." Egan headed off to Harrisburg to represent the 173rd District, which runs from Wissinoming to Torresdale. She was immediately overwhelmed. "I was the only girl in this great old-boy bastion," she said. Egan spent 10 veal's in the Legislature, but by 1090 she was frustrated with the slow pace of change and worried that her two daughters were not seeing enough of their mother.

would not talk with a reporter about the experience. Egan granted an interview, cracked jokes and spoke seriously about it as a learning experience. And then came the expiration of the Transport Workers Union, Local 234, contract earlier this year. With each day of failed negotiations, the threat of a city-crippling strike became more and more real. Egan worked around the clock in the March negotiations, her left arm in the sling.

Then came the tests. She had MRIs. Then CAT scans. Then head-to-toe X-rays. And finally a needle inserted in her spine to collect a sample of her bone marrow.

That- marrow held the terrible truth multiple myeloma. "The cancer is in my bones and it's eating away at my bones," Egan said. "It's pretty much from my hips all the way up to my skull. It is the same cancer that thi-ust former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro into the headlines when she announced her December 1988 diagnosis. Egan spent five days at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in May for her First 96-hour chemotherapy session.

Her husband slept in the room with her and visitors stopped by all day long. "The flowers just kept coming," Egan said. The second treatment was done at home last month. It didn't help. Like Ferraro, Egan will have to use the powerful drug Thalidomide to Fight the cancer.

"The good news is I'm at a relatively young and healthy age to handle the treatment," said Egan. "It's an aggressive treatment." If the Thalidomide works, Egan faces stem-cell treatment and a bone marrow transfer, efforts to replace cancerous cells with healthy cells. Having a big family helps. Two of her brothers have been matched as bone marrow donors. The end of treatment, Egan says, could come in January.

Until then, she is sitting back and enjoying the big picture. She says a sudden diagnosis of a deadly disease helps weed out the unimportant stuff. It clears her head to focus on what is good and positive in her life. "I think it's a great lesson," she said. "You never know what a day's going to bring." JIM MacMILLANDaily News Egan (above), showing first signs of her illness in March, today manifests the effects of her chemotherapy (left).

laughs as he remembers how she led the scramble to safety. "Fran was outdistancing us," he says of the staffs retreat. The staff has been sending meals to Egan's home. "I have my whole family praying for her," McLaughlin said. "We're hoping she never loses that spirit she has, and that fight she used to help us through a lot of problems here at can still find them.

"I know them all." The chicken put away for later, she continues with the stoiy After her 10 years in the state House, Egan returned home and took a temporary job at the Special Olympics, a cause she feels strongly about because one of her brothei-s is retarded. She soon boosted the agency's fund-raising. Then Ed Rendell called with a job in the managing director's office. The mayor had remembered Egan from a mock presidential debate they held at St. Hubert's in 1988.

Egan had played the role of George H.W. Bush. Rendell played Mike Dukakis. Rendell, Egan concedes, won the debate. "Fran is.one of the best people I know," Rendell said last month.

"And without question, she is one of the best public servants this city has ever seen." As Rendell's 1995 re-election loomed, he offered Egan a huge task head of Licenses and Inspections. "That sounded like a challenge to me," she said. In that role, Egan found an agency full of problems. As chief, she saw Frank Antico, a once-powerful inspector, arrested by the FBI and eventually sentenced to Five years in prison for JAV TAIBOTTFor the Daily News Say the words cancer and chemotherapy and most people think of a person wast ing away as hair falls out and appetite disappears. Put a box of Roy Rogers fried chicken in front of Egan and that stereotype is blown to bits.

Talking at her kitchen table, Egan's face lights up as her daughter, Bridget, who's spending the summer at the Jersey Shore, arrives home for a visit, )n the way home, Bridget stopied at a highway rest stop with a Roy Rogers meal. "I love Roy Rogers," Egan said, lamenting the closing of several of the chain's restaurants in the Philadelphia area. She quickly ticks off where in the region she Egan left in 1999 to become the public face of SEPTA. That year, SEPTA was shamed by a court case that showed the agency wrongfully sued the mother of a 4-year-old boy maimed by one of its subway escalators. The resulting media coverage lasted seven months, as SEPTA's legal department was examined and reorganized.

SEPTA's top attorney was forced to retire. Egan proved a good sport during that long, awkward time in the public spotlight. In April, she and SEPTA General Manager Jack Leary were stuck for 30 minutes in a long-malfunctioning Market -Frankford line elevator. Leary, who had promised for years to get that elevator Fixed, has its drones and, unfortunately, it has some corrupt people," she said. "But there are a lot of knowledgeable people, too." Her tenure there saw tragedy and comedy.

A judge was killed by a sign falling from a dilapidated building. An inspector was shot to death in a mugging while on his rounds. When the Jack Frost sugar refinery refused to fall down after 13 hours of attempted demolition in 1997, Egan and her staff walked up to the building for a closer look. Then it decided to fall. Ed McLaughlin, who heads now and worked for Egan then, PAGE 10 PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS WEDNESDAY.

JULY 18 2001.