Fourth Loss In Family Devastated By Cancer -- Brain Tumor Claims Last Surviving Male

MIAMI - Steve Southerland, the last surviving male in a family that has seen seven generations devastated by cancer, died as the result of a brain tumor.

He was 36 and had been battling cancer off and on for more than 20 years.

Southerland, an attorney, died Tuesday at the home of his mother, Jane McMillen, who also lost two other sons and her husband to cancer. She and her current husband, Bert, were at his bedside when he died.

Scientists say the family has a genetic defect that allowed cancer to easily invade their bodies. Cases of cancer among Southerland's ancestors had been found as far back as the 1840s.

Researchers who have studied the genetic defect since the 1960s say several hundred families in the United States have it. Such families have a 50-50 chance of passing the defect on to their offspring. In Southerland's case, none of the three brothers was lucky enough to beat those odds.

Southerland's brother Jeffrey died of leukemia in 1967 at age 4. His brother Michael died of a rare spinal cancer at age 16 in 1981, and six weeks later his father, Raymond, died of a brain tumor at age 43.

Several relatives of Ray Southerland in the family's native state of Indiana also have been found to have cancer.

Steve Southerland was hopeful he had the cancer beat after his left leg was amputated in 1974. He dreamed of becoming a lawyer.

But while he was studying for the bar exam in 1986, he suffered a seizure and collapsed during a softball game. Doctors found a golfball-sized tumor deep in the left side of his brain and decided to operate.

"It was the best excuse in the world not to take a bar exam," he joked at the time. He underwent yet another operation in 1990 when another brain tumor was found. But the tumor that killed him could not be removed without leaving Southerland unable to speak or move.

Still, he remained upbeat in an Associated Press interview earlier this year.

"You know, this hasn't been a bad life. We've met a lot of wonderful people, and we've always gone forward. Always forward," he said from his wheelchair. "I'm dictating a journal about my life. I'll keep doing it as long as I'm lucid."