Nestled into an oversized chair in her dance studio on Signal Mountain, watching her seven-year-old daughter and a friend play nearby, Tammy Crawford speaks with such life, animation, and humor that it's hard for a person seated on the sofa opposite to believe that the conversation shouldn't be happening.

Barely more than a year ago, she wasn't expected to survive after an aggressive carcinoma was detected on her tonsil. Today, after surgery and grueling chemotherapy, the cancer is in remission and Tammy is celebrating life with her family and through the Studio for Performing Arts, which opened earlier this year.

Family and performing always have been important parts of her life, and both also figure prominently in the story of her bout with cancer, going back to when she was four years old.

"I know that sounds like the Shirley Temple story, but I grew up in a little town in West Virginia where there was nothing, no dance studio or anything like that." So she and her friends entertained themselves, first singing and dancing to records by Skeeter Davis and The Ronettes, eventually putting on shows of their own. "We'd hang sheets in the attic for a curtain and sell tickets to neighbors. We would do birthday shows, and after we got skates one year for Christmas, we did a roller skating routine."

It wasn't until eighth grade that she first received formal dance and baton training, qualifying for a spot in her school's majorette line. "We all wanted to be good, but we couldn't rehearse without supervision, and I remember we got in trouble one year because we went to the director's house at six o'clock in the morning wanting to rehearse. I think we just about killed Mr. Allen."

Those are still times of fond memories for her. "All we did was work on our routines. I don't know if it was because there was nothing else to do, but it was great. There were no drugs, no alcohol, no parties, and I feel very blessed to have grown up there and had the friends I did."

Her love for the theater also began there, in the tenth grade, when she worked on choreography for the euphemistically-titled The Best Little Chicken House in Texas. "We cleaned it up a lot." A year later she was cast in Cheaper by the Dozen. "That was it for me. I was in every production after that."

Then it was off to a satellite campus of West Virginia University in Concord, where she enrolled in Dr. Ron Burgher's theater classes. "He's got to be 105. He was at least in his 60s when I was there in 1985. Most people hated him. He could be really difficult, but he was such a good actor himself. I remember he'd get bored with rehearsing on stage, we'd go outside, and he'd direct us lying on the grass in his jeans, smoking."

While in college, she began performing with a dinner theater group in Charleston, "and then some of us decided to go to Los Angeles for a year. One of the actors in our company knew David Selby, who was working on Falcon Crest at that time, and we packed up and drove across the country. It was ridiculous. We didn't have a place to live or anything. Finally we found a little apartment for $1,000 a month."

Tammy found work in commercials and small parts on episodes of Baywatch and Alien Nation. She even dyed her hair red and bought green contacts to audition for the part of Ado Annie in a production of Oklahoma!, landing the role out of a field of 450 actresses.

Returning to West Virginia and college when her grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, she reluctantly agreed to take part in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. "I'm not much for Shakespeare, but Dr. Burgher had made sure I had a scholarship every year, so I couldn't say no. The show ran the whole summer, and I failed every class I took. I even failed tennis. I didn't go to class. I was always in the theater learning my lines."

Eventually it was on to owning her own dance and performing arts studio, marriage, and a daughter. And cancer. Specifically, a Stage IV carcinoma that had worked its way into the lymph nodes.

"I can't explain it, except for the second-hand smoke in the theater. I didn't even have a sore throat. It's an ironic thing. Dr. Burgher smokes 10 packs a day, and he's fine, and I get a smoker's cancer. But everyone is born with cancer cells. It's just a matter of whether they develop or not."

Given a twenty-percent chance to live, she underwent a rigorous schedule of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. "I took an apartment next to the hospital because I had treatments every day. I was so weak that I could not get out of bed, and this time last year I couldn't even talk. My vocal cords were fried from the radiation. But my hair has grown back, and I'm beginning to be able to sing again.

"I made it because my immune system was so strong and I was so healthy, aside from a little cancer. Really, though, the only reason I'm here today is the grace of God and all the help and support from my church, my family, and my friends. I don't know what my mission is, but I'm obviously here for some reason."

She perceives the Studio for Performing Arts as part of the mission, as it allows her to share with local youngsters things that have enriched her life. "This is what I love to do. It's what I'm good at. I'm not a great performer - a show has to be a darn good one for me to be in it. I'm a teacher. I love to relay what I have to others, especially the little guys. When it's spotlight time, the kids are taking their curtain call, their parents are standing up clapping.that's what it's all about."

And, upon reflection, she added that helping others cope with cancer is also part of her purpose. "I'd rather not have had cancer, but I'm proud to have gone through it if my experience can help someone else. The main thing I've found is that it's all in your attitude. You have to get it before it gets you. Positive energy, positive attitude. And you reprioritize. I used to work all the time, from six in the morning to 11 at night, every day, and I had to have three shows going at once. I've learned to do just one show at a time, and I instead of six a.m., I open at nine now."