“Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.”
These are the words of Jimmy Valvano, a legendary basketball coach who made a rousing speech supporting cancer research shortly before succumbing to the disease in 1993.
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“It's one of the best speeches I ever heard,” recalls friend and sports analyst Dick Vitale.
Vitale is sitting in his office in his Lakewood Ranch home, having called all the basketball games for ESPN Sports from his adjacent study, a safety work-around for pandemic.
The office is also Vitale’s headquarters for his fundraising efforts in Coach Valvano’s name.
He has stacks of pictures and stories in neat piles in his office– all about children fighting cancer.
Last year his big gala went virtual—and this year, it’s a scaled-down in-person event in Sarasota on Friday, May 7.
Vitale is finding ways continue raising money—even in pandemic times.
It goes back to the speech at the ESPN ESPY Awards in 1993. That’s what motivates him.
Coach Valvano was very sick, but he took to the podium, with Vitale’s help, calling for cancer research funding as he accepted the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.
Valvano then announced the creation of the V Foundation for Cancer Research.
“It may not save my life. It may save my children’s lives. It may save someone you love,” Valvano said. “Cancer can take away all my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, It cannot touch my heart and it cannot touch my soul.”
The next day when Vitale called on Valvano, Valvano said there was no longer any hope for him to survive, and he wept over the thoughts of missing his children’s lives.
“It was the last conversation we ever had,” said Vitale.
Valvano passed away less than two months later.
In that time, Vitale says they’ve raised more than $250,000,000 for all kinds of cancer research.