Time Warner service men and women donned pink t-shirts Wednesday in support of a disease that has touched the families of nearly all the 180 cable television workers in the Golden Triangle.

Wednesday marked the first of four mid-week days the company will wear pink shirts in support of breast cancer awareness — a disease that strikes about one in eight women at some point in their lifetimes.

“We want our customers to know we heavily support this because it touches everybody’s life. Whether it’s someone’s spouse, mother, sisters, grandmother, aunt, daughter or daughter-in-law, just about everyone knows someone who has battled the disease,” Lloyd Christian, director of technical operations, said.

While the company’s warehouse, customer service and retail workers will show their support by wearing pink all day in their offices, service technicians plan to wear their pink shirts all day as they fan out into Golden Triangle communities to install cable television. ˚

“It seems like the basic human thing to do to support our friends and family,” Ovral Chestnut, 26, of Lumberton said.

For Willie Gillis, 35, of Beaumont, wearing the pink shirts was something that hit close to home. His mother-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer four years ago, and is now a proud survivor.

“I hope this will bring awareness. Not many really know how to recognize the signs, and it is so important to detect it early,” Gillis said. “My mother-in-law found a lump, got in early and got it removed.”

In addition to wearing the pink shirts, Time Warner is contributing $2,500 to the Julie Rogers Gift of Life Program.

Though the monetary contribution can be used in whatever way Gift of Life deems necessary, Christian said he hopes it will be used to allow women to have mammograms.

“We are supporting the awareness of breast cancer with the hope that one day they will have a cure for it,” Mark Orta, 33, a 54-year service technician, said.

Though she was not diagnosed with breast cancer, Orta said his own mother had died 10 years ago from ovarian cancer, so he is glad to do what he can to promote awareness to a disease that claims so many lives.

In 2015, an estimated 321,840 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in women in the U.S. along with 60,290 new cases of non-invasive (in situ) breast cancer.

E-mail: skoonce@panews.com

Twitter: skooncePANews