Selfless vs. Selfish

I was going to write an article about Matt Leinart's whining about not being appreciated by his team today.

And then I was going to write about Plaxico's bid for work release being shot down. (pun intended)

And then I read about Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope. I realized today would be a good day to write about someone doing something for other people instead of complaining about something going wrong in their lives.

I had heard about Terry Fox several years ago while dealing with my father's battle with cancer. It's ironic really, you don't really realize how much you learn about something until you're staring directly at it. Having to deal with something like cancer on a daily basis really makes you stop and try to learn everything you can about it, in the hopes that knowledge really is power. Terry Fox believed awareness and money would help out cancer research. So, in 1980, after losing his right leg to osteosarcoma, he started to run across Canada with a goal of raising a million dollars.

You read that right. He wanted to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. With one leg. In order to reach the most populated areas, he ran along the Canada/US border, running the equivalent of a marathon's distance daily. Once he began, he changed his goal to reflect the population of Canada; he wanted to raise $1 for each person who lived in Canada at the time, a total of 24,000,000 people. That's a mind boggling thought now, let alone 30 years ago. It's also stunning to think Terry was 22 years old when he decided to begin the run.

At age 22, what were you doing? Going out with your friends? Just graduated from college maybe? Hitting the clubs and drinking? All of the above probably. I know I was. It's difficult to imagine living life as an amputee, and being considered disabled by the world you live in. It's even more incredible to realize this young man, wanted to do more than just walk through life with the hand he'd been dealt. He realized people saw him as less than what they were. He refused to be considered disabled. Terry Fox ran for 143 days. He ran 3,339 miles. And he stopped only when he could no longer breathe well enough to keep running. It was on September 1, 1980, Terry Fox was taken to a hospital and told the cancer that took his leg had spread to his lungs.

There was no happy ending for Terry Fox. Despite wanting to finish the run, he was unable to overcome the physical effects of the cancer treatments, eventually passing away in June of 1981. By the time he was no longer able to run, he had singlehandedly raised $1.7 million. In the coming days, a national telethon was held, bringing the total amount raised to over $10 million. A year later, over $23 million had been raised.

Since his death, cancer awareness is unfortunately all too common. More people are affected by the disease now than ever before, and a feat like Terry Fox's has slipped out of the daily consciousness. But each year, there is a memorial road race in Terry's name, whose sole goal is to raise awareness and funds for cancer research. To date, over $500 million has been raised in Terry Fox's name.

$500 million for cancer research. All from a 22 year old kid with an amputated leg who wanted to let people know what cancer really looked like. What cancer really did to a person. And what a person could do despite it.

Terry Fox was an amazing athlete and an incredibly selfless person. And on the day he couldn't run any further, I write this to salute him.