Photography by Megan Mumford
This story is part of our annual Capital Region Gives Back initiative that honors 10 locals who are making our community a better place. Read up on all of the 2026 honorees and join us on December 9 for the 8th annual Capital Region Gives Back event at Putnam Place.
The story of Get Your Rack Back begins, as many cancer charities do, with a diagnosis. Connie Bramer was 39 when she was told she had breast cancer, making her the fourth generation in her family to battle the disease.
Bramer documented her treatment and progress on the website CaringBridge, and later, wrote about the entire experience in a book. “It was a way for me to take my cancer journey, put it in a box, and bury it in the backyard,” she says of the book. “It’s called How Connie Got Her Rack Back, but really, it’s about getting yourself back.”
When the book came out in 2012, Bramer hosted a release party that doubled as a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. She brought the fundraiser back in 2013 and 2014, raising some $25,000 over three years, before asking herself if there was a way she could have an even greater impact. And with that, Get Your Rack Back (GYRB) was born.
While the foundation itself emerged from Bramer’s own cancer journey, it was the story of another local family that defined the services GYRB would provide.
“My surgeon told me about a patient he had who had to choose between getting treatment and working to support her family,” says Bramer. “She worked, and she ended up losing her life.”
After hearing that, Bramer made a decision: Her foundation would provide medical copayment assistance to patients with cancer of all types.
Eleven years later, GYRB has served some 500 patients with copayment assistance and gas and grocery gift cards, and is gearing up for its annual holiday stocking initiative, which stuffs around 700 stockings for children affected by cancer at hospitals from Poughkeepsie to Plattsburgh.
“We have a little army of elves in my basement,” Bramer says of the stocking-stuffing effort. “We have a lot of volunteers who are cancer survivors. There’s just this innate need to pay forward kindness. And that’s really what we’re trying to do.”
