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Risky Ginger Makes it all Work in Butte
Active and involved are the best adjectives for Butte’s Melissa McGregor, but you should ad tough, tenacious, and a terror on the roller derby rink. [Photo provided by Melissa McGregor]
By Connie Daugherty Five days a week she is Melissa McGregor, oncology supervising nurse at St. James Cancer Center in Butte. “I actually love being in a hospital,” she says. “I love being a caretaker.” But when she isn’t being a caretaker – of people or of animals – she is Risky Ginger, blocker and “fresh meat” trainer for the Butte Copper City Queens roller derby team. At fifty-four she is the oldest “bouting” (team competition) skater in the Montana Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA). “I just need to be a part of this because it’s amazing,” she says. There are about ten WFTDA teams throughout the state. Two years ago when she was fifty-two she saw the notice that a roller derby team was forming in Butte. She decided to give it a try. “I love that it’s so retro,” Melissa says. “I’d always wanted to be an athlete.” Melissa spent most of her adult life being physically active; she was a marathon runner, an exerdance instructor, and Pink Gloves boxing trainer. She still works out at Cross Fit every day. Although she had never been involved in a team sport, she thought, “Why can’t I be an athlete at my age – I know I’m incredibly driven and I’m disciplined. What more could it take?” Looking back she confesses to fleeting second thoughts when she showed up and there were 42 other women, all of whom were younger – some twenty years younger than she. She admits that it was hard, that it took her three months to pass her basic skills test, and that she is sometimes “really tired,” after a practice or a bout. But Melissa McGregor was never one to back away from a challenge. When she was thirty-six, and a single mother who knew she needed to make more money to raise her daughter, she quit her TV broadcasting job and went back to college to be a nurse. “I felt a kind of calling for it,” she says. While the creative, energetic side of her would never totally abandon theater, she had also admired nurses since she was hospitalized at thirteen. “I just thought they were so awesome.” She respected these special caretakers and longed to be part of what they do. So she drove back and forth to Carroll College to earn a second college degree – very different from her U of M degree in Radio & TV Broadcasting and Theater. And she has not regretted a minute of it. During her sixteen years at St. James hospital she has worked in the ER and in ICU among other places, but oncology is “the most positive place I’ve ever worked as a nurse,” she insists. “My patients… become these amazing positive people.” Each day she works with people who, while fighting, know that they will probably not get better. She not only cares for them, she admires and respects them. “I’ve learned a lot about life from my patients,” she says, the enthusiasm and admiration obvious in her voice. “When I come to work I don’t have a bad day,” she says. “My patients are having a bad day.” (Continued on page 46)