Cancer Survivor Sammie Jo Porter Making Emotional Swim Across America Again
Samantha Johanna (Sammie Jo) Porter, now age 24, was only 11 years old when she woke up with a swollen eye, which most would think at that age, that she had gotten was something in her eye and it would be a relatively easy solution to solve.
However, after multiple doctor visits, a CT scan showed a pea-size hole in her left orbit and a diagnosis of Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH). LCH is a rare, cancer condition where immune cells build up and form tumors or damage tissue, bone and organs. Sammie Jo didn’t let this devastating diagnosis stop her. An avid swimmer and child athlete, Sammie Jo was successfully treated and kept swimming throughout her medical issues. In 2011, after emerging successfully from her treatment, she joined the cancer fundraising efforts with Swim Across America.
Sammie Jo ended up with an incision from ear-to-ear, had a layer of her skull shaved, which was then used to repair the hole in her orbit. She and her family lived in Texas at the time and her first Swim Across America event after her recovery was in Dallas.
“I got involved in Swim Across America a year after I fought bone cancer,” said Sammie Jo. “I grew up swimming competitively, so when I heard that this open water swim was taking place in Dallas, I thought it was the perfect fit. While in college at Mizzou, I also participated in the Swim Across America St. Louis event. I didn’t realize then that this organization, shortly after, would become my family and I wouldn’t change that for the world. I’m now so honored to be helping run the Junior Advisory Board for the Atlanta swim and on the Swim Across America Associate National Board!”
In high school, Sammie Jo swam for Lakeside Aquatic Club and was the 2015-2016 Scholastic All-American. At the University of Missouri, she was on the swim team where she was a stand-out ranked swimmer in the 100 and 200 free and won multiple event titles and received an All-American honorable mention as a sophomore as part of the Missou 400 relay team at the NCAA Championships. Sammie Jo graduated in the spring of 2021 from the University of Missouri Sinclair School of Nursing and happily accepted her dream job as a neonatal ICU nurse at Aflac Cancer & Blood Disorders Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the Swim Across America Atlanta’s local beneficiary.
Sammie Jo dove right in and signed up to help spearhead the Swim Across America Atlanta Junior Advisory Board, where close to 20 middle and high school teens from throughout the Atlanta area work on specific fundraising programs for the swim, as well as swimming themselves. Sammie Jo also joined Swim Across America’s National Associate Board as a junior member.
Throughout the years, Sammie Jo Porter has raised more than $20,000 for crucial cancer research with Swim Across America. She has participated as a swimmer and volunteer at Swim Across America events in Dallas, Charlotte, Seattle St. Louis and Atlanta.
Established in 2013, Swim Across America Atlanta has raised more than $3 million for its local beneficiary the Aflac Cancer & Blood Disorders Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and each year welcomes more than 1,000 swimmers and volunteers to help make waves to fight cancer. The Atlanta swim is also known as the “Olympic swimmer super bowl,” as numerous Olympic swimmers, including Craig Beardsley, Carlton Bruner, Maritza Correia McClendon, Nei-Kuan Chia, Hali Flickinger, Missy Franklin, Geoff Gaberino, Andrew Gemmell, Doug Gjertsen, Bobby Hackett, McClain Hermes, Katie Hoff, Joe Hudepohl, Janel Jorgensen McArdle, Kristy Kowal, Kara Lynn Joyce, Steve Lundquist, Megan Neyer, Heather Petri, Ramon Valle, Neil Versfield, Shannon Vreeland, Daniel Waters, Amanda Weir, Ashley Whitney, Peter Wright, Eric Wunderlich, and Paige Zemina are often in attendance each year, along with Paralympic swimmers Mallory Weggemann, Hannah Aspden, and McClain Hermes.
Nationally, Swim Across America was founded in 1987 with its first open water event in Long Island Sound. Since that time, the nonprofit organization has raised more than $100 million to fight cancer. In its 36 years of making waves to fight cancer, more than 100,000 swimmers and 150 Olympians have swum the circumference of the earth three times, uniting a movement to fight cancer that has created a groundswell of support spanning all generations. Today, more than 24 communities hold open water swims and hundreds of charity pool swims each year, from Nantucket to under the Golden Gate Bridge, which support innovative cancer research, detection and patient programs.