No Subject

Ringo's daughter returning to Hub for treatment
by Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa

Monday, November 12, 2001

Former Beatle Ringo Starr, who kept a brave vigil at his daughter Lee's
bedside when she battled a brain tumor in 1995, is returning to Brigham &
Women's Hospital with Lee because her cancer has recurred.

``It's too bad,'' said our spy across the pond. ``Everyone feels for this
girl.''

Lee Starkey, the 31-year-old daughter of the Beatles drummer and his former
wife, the late Maureen Cox Tigrett, underwent surgery for a rare form of
brain tumor called ependymoma at Brigham & Women's in 1995. Dr. Peter Black,
the head of neurosurgery at the hospital, performed the operation.

Following the delicate cranial procedure, Lee and her family were in Boston
for six weeks so she could receive daily 8-minute radiation treatments.

Although Lee's prognosis at the time was very good, she returned to Boston
with her dad and his wife, Barbara Bach, two weeks ago for tests at Brigham
& Women's.

Sources say the tumor has returned and she will have to come back to Boston
for a series of treatments.

Lee was referred to the Boston hospital in 1995 after she was rushed to the
posh London Clinic to have fluid removed from her brain. The drummer's
daughter, who nursed her mother during a long and losing battle against
leukemia in 1994, fell ill shortly after her mother's death.

Maureen Cox Tigrett was diagnosed with leukemia just as her husband, ex-Hard
Rock Cafi guru Isaac Tigrett, opened his flagship House of Blues in L. A.
(Tigrett once jokingly referred to his late wife as his ``greatest piece of
Beatles memorabilia.``)

Ringo is the third member of the fab Four to be touched by cancer. Paul
McCartney's wife, Linda, died of breast cancer and George Harrison was
diagnosed with lung cancer and a brain tumor earlier this year. John Lennon
was shot dead by assassin Mark David Chapman outside his apartment in 1980.