Okay. I know. You came to JHM this morning, looking for my weekly “Why For” column and found — in its place — a story about cancer. Bleh.
I apologize for that. And promise that — once I get back from LA (I’m out here to cover Disney’s annual shareholders meeting. Which gets underway at Anaheim’s Arrowhead Pond in about 2 1/2 hours) — I’ll get right back to answering your Disney-related questions.
But — that said … You know, there are more important things in life than obsessing about Disney theme parks and feature length cartoons. There’s your health, your friends and your family, for instance.
And — me — I’m lucky enough to have a really great family. (Okay, so maybe they’re a little on the weird side. But that’s probably why I fit in so well with this bunch. As regular readers of this website can readily attest to, I have a rather large weird side. Not to mention an extremely weird back & front. Anyway … )
Which is why — when the call goes out in mid-March that the entire Hill clan is going to meet up at the Avon Baptist Church on the first Saturday of April for the Janet McDonald Memorial Walk Against Cancer … I go. I get up in the pre-dawn hours and then make the two hour drive down from deep in the woods of New Hampshire to Massachusetts.
“Why do you do that, Jim?,” you ask. “Why do you drive two hours in the dark so that you can then walk five miles in the cold?,” you ask. Well, you wouldn’t be asking that question if you had actually known my cousin, Janet.
Photo by Barbara Hill
Janet … She was fearless. When she found that that constant tickle in the back of her throat wasn’t a cold, but — rather — a particularly aggressive form of melanoma, do you know what the very first thing that Janet did was? Literally on her way home from the hospital, she stopped at her children’s school and quickly made arrangements to shift her three kids over from public school to parochial school. So that — when Janet was gone — her husband, Tom, then wouldn’t have to deal with questions like “What sort of clothes should the kids be wearing when I send them off to school in the morning?”
“What kind of person does that?,” you query. The type of person who never put herself first. Someone who was always more concerned about her friends and her family and the community at large than she was about her own small, pitiful little problems.
That was why — in the Spring of 1995 — as part of her initial fund-raising effort for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Janet walked the entire length of the Boston Marathon. With her sister, Lynne, and her cousins Andrea & Christine by her side, Janet covered all 26.2 miles.
Now keep in mind that she did this while still undergoing an experimental drug therapy. Why For? Because the money that Janet was raising for the Immunotherapy Research Department might someday save someone’s life. Not her own, mind you. But someone else’s.
I mean, how often do you meet someone who’s that selfless? Who — at a time like that, when most of us would be turning inward, placing our own needs first — would totally disregard their own pain, grief and suffering so that they could then help others?
Perhaps the saddest part of this story is — as her days really began to dwindle down — Janet decided that she wanted to do one last nice thing for her family. So she packed their bags, loaded them in the car all by herself and then made plans for she & Tom to pick up the kids at school.
You see, once the kids were in the car, Janet planned on revealing that the McDonald family was headed straight to Logan Airport. Where they’d then board a flight to Orlando for a surprise family trip to Walt Disney World.
Ah, it would have been great if the McDonald family had actually gotten the chance to take that trip. But literally on the morning that they were supposed to leave for the airport, Janet took sick. She went into the hospital one final time … and never came out again.
This is why — on the first Saturday of April each year — all of the Hills & the Grants & the Bardons drive down to the South Shore. So that we can then honor the memory of this brave, generous, selfless woman.
Mind you, I’m hoping that JHM readers can also be selfless. Or — at the very least — prove themselves to be generous by kicking in a few bucks for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
Let me stress here that — should you make a donation to this well-deserving charity — that I don’t personally benefit in any way. Not a single dollar raised goes into my pocket and/or gets funneled back toward JHM. All donations go straight to the folks who are working in Dana Farber’s Immunotherapy Research Department.
Wait a minute. I want to make a quick correction here: I will get some sort of personal benefit if you do make a donation to the Janet McDonald Memorial Walk Against Cancer. If you do make a donation, I will then be able to take pride in the readers of this website. Who — just like Janet — were able to see the forest for the trees and realize that — in the brief bit of time that we spend on this planet — that we’re supposed to try & help one another.
So no pressure here. But if you feel like making a donation, please click on this link. And then — if you’ll scroll to the very bottom of that webpage — you’ll find out how exactly you can go about sending in some dough to this well-deserving charity.
Anyway … I promise that we’ll get back to the fun & informative stuff here at JHM come Monday morning (I’ve already collected truly killer material for stories during my first 24 hours out here in LA). So look for those stories to start turning up on the site sometime next week, alright?
Thanks again for your time, folks. Have a great weekend, okay?