This article is part of Times Opinion’s 2022 Holiday Gifting Guide. Read more about the guidance in a note from Opinion’s editor, Kathleen Kingsbury.
About 10 years ago, Lloyd Carr, a former University of Michigan football coach, stopped by my office to bring me a football helmet.
It was corn and blue, and he wrote “Go Blue!” up there. I started out as a sports reporter, but I don’t understand what this one-man myth is all about. He seemed fun and charming, but I had to call my football-loving sister to find out that Carr is one of the most respected college football coaches of the most winning show in history. college football. The tough Tennessee native joined the Michigan Wolverines in 1980 and led them from 1995 to 2007. Many people in the office were awestruck, crammed on the couch to talk to him.
By the end of the afternoon, I was so impressed with the Future Celebrity Football Hall, now 77, that we agreed to stay in touch. We emailed back and forth until one day his email suddenly stopped. “Hey,” I wrote him. “What’s wrong? I miss talking to you. That’s how I found out that this man, full of life and full of life, had entered the atmosphere of grief.
His nephew Chad, an angelic-looking blonde, was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor on September 23, 2014, three days before his fourth birthday. Fourteen months later, he died, the victim of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma.
Carr, son Jason and daughter-in-law Tammi begin ChadTough Foundation; To date it has funded more than $20 million in research to combat DIPG The cancer is almost always fatal and 150 to 300 children contract it annually in the United States alone.
Carr has turned his old mottos from the football field into his mantra in fighting cancer: “You can’t do everything, but you can do something” and “Don’t blame anyone.” , expect nothing, do something.”
“My whole life, since I was a kid, I’ve hated losing,” Carr said when I called him on Thursday. “As a player and a coach, whenever we lose, it’s a heartbreaking loss for me, in my eyes. I thought I knew what heartbreak was, but I didn’t. Chad’s experience taught me. I know now.
After Chad’s death, Tammi curls up in a ball, thinking about all the things Chad loves: orange sunsets, his garage sales job, and his brothers. But then her son Tommy, then 7 years old, walked into her room and called, “Get up and make breakfast!” It was a reminder that she was indebted to her two other children to keep fighting. Tommy is now 15 years old and his brother CJ is a high school student going to Notre Dame to play quarterback.
As they grow, so does the foundation; last year, ChadTough joined forces with the Michael Mosier Defeat DIPG Foundation, becoming the ChadTough Defeat DIPG Foundation. Michael also died of a DIPG in 2015 and is only a year older than Chad.
Tammi Carr told me: “We just had Chad’s angel rival and it felt like seven years had passed in the blink of an eye, but it was also forever. “Grief is a strange thing.”
I also met Ciaran Staunton, like Lloyd Carr, before his life fell apart. He owns two Irish bars, one in Midtown Manhattan and the other in Brooklyn. I also know his wife, Orlaith; his daughter, Kathleen; and his son, Rory, 5 foot 9, weighing 169 pounds, 12 years old.
“He fell at school,” Staunton said, recalling a Tuesday in March 2012. “His arm was severed. They didn’t send him to the nurse. He was up that night, throwing up. Their pediatrician and doctors in the hospital’s emergency room said nothing was seriously wrong. But bacteria got into his bloodstream from the cut.
“He started turning green on Friday night. On Sunday night our beautiful boy died. He was almost green from head to toe. The third night before he passed away, I bought him a pizza and asked him what kind he wanted. Next Tuesday, I was at the funeral home and they asked me which coffin I wanted.”
Like Carrs, Stauntons Begin communication — called Ending Sepsis, Rory Staunton’s Legacy — to raise awareness about sepsis and improve measures to prevent sepsis.
“We had never heard of the word ‘sepsis’ before Rory passed away. We didn’t hear it in the hospital,” Staunton said. “We had a hearing in the US Senate on this matter. We found that it is killing a quarter of a million Americans every year. Since Rory’s death, nearly three million Americans have died from sepsis.”
With the work of the organization and the extensive coverage of their case by the late Jim Dwyer, the Times columnist, New York passed regulations regulating how doctors should treat a possible illness. preventable. The rules have been noted with help save thousands of lives.
“It completely destroyed my life, my wife’s life, my daughter’s life,” Staunton said. “Rory is now 23 years old. Trauma is the world we live in. It is a world where we are surrounded until, fortunately, we die.”
This article is part of Times Opinion’s 2022 Holiday Gifting Guide. The author has no direct connection with the organizations mentioned. If you are interested in any of the organizations mentioned in Times Opinion’s Giving Guide 2022, please go directly to that organization’s website. Neither the author nor The Times were able to address questions about groups or facilitate donations.
The Times is committed to publishing variety of letters to the editor. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this or any of our articles. Here are some advice. And here is our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
