Pan-Mass Challenge -

August 11, 2005
By Mark Starr

Each summer, in early August, I am reminded of how terribly misguided we are about whom we choose as our society's heroes.

I don't do mellow. I can't even fake it. But every summer I overpay for the sounds of the surf and the whiff of salt-air breezes. And after two weeks of ocean therapy, I at least have some faint notion of what mellow must feel like.

So I don't want to squander these, my most laid-back moments, writing about any of the usual suspects. Not about "Manny being Manny" or about Raffi being Raffi. I don't want to say a word about Terrell Owens (nor hear a word T.O. has to say, either). And please don't get me started about those decisions—two thumbs up for thuggery—that put Kenny Rogers back on the mound and Todd Bertuzzi back on the ice.

I want to write about some good news for a change, that increasingly rare bird in our business, which readers insist they want, even prefer. Frankly I'm skeptical, but I'm in the mood to take a chance. I want to tell you about what one man on a bike has done in the fight against cancer.

No, the guy isn't Lance Armstrong, though he figures later in the story. It's my brother, Billy and—please bear with me—it's a pretty extraordinary tale.

You've got to go back with me to 1973, when Billy was graduating from the University of Denver. He had been a gifted high-school athlete: all-league soccer, point guard on the basketball team, state championship tennis team. But in college the lure of "Rocky Mountain High," in every sense, steered him toward individual pursuits like skiing, mountain climbing and rappelling. He was planning, shortly after graduation, to pursue a great adventure—maybe in Nepal, maybe New Zealand, maybe everywhere. But then our mother, Betty, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, melanoma that had spread throughout her body. My brother put his plans on hold and stayed home in Boston until she died 10 months later, at 49.

Billy never got to Nepal. The ordeal and the loss took a toll on his spirit and somehow derailed him. Over the next years, he would pursue many careers—frontier newspaperman, big-city public-relations exec, grad student in social work, restaurant-supplies salesman—for which he seemed distinctly unsuited. He was still too young for it to be said that he was failing, but he was clearly foundering.

Then in 1980, he had an idea. Frankly, at the time, it seemed like a nice, little idea—not much more than that. He got about three dozen friends to ride their bicycles across Massachusetts to raise money—in memory of our mother—for the Jimmy Fund, the famed fund-raising arm of Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He called it the Pan-Mass Challenge for the Jimmy Fund and it raised about $10,000.

This was before rides and walks had become a staple of charity fund-raising, and Billy felt he was on the cusp of something big. However, the folks at Dana-Farber, visionaries that they might be in science and medicine, saw it as nothing much more than a clever upgrade on the lemonade stand. And they were less enthusiastic about the check than they were nervous about Billy using the good name of the Jimmy Fund.

They gave him a polite brush-off, suggesting that it might be best if the PMC was a one-time affair.

Billy had always been particularly good at ignoring those whose instructions conflicted with his own best intentions. (His soccer career began after he was booted off the football team for calling a fake punt on fourth down that cost his team the game.) So he pursued his PMC dream anyway. And today nobody is more thankful for that than those same folks at the Dana-Farber. He has transformed the PMC into the biggest event of its kind in the world. And each year he has boosted its annual gift to the Dana-Farber; last year it was a take-your-breath-away $20 million, which represents almost half all monies raised by the cancer center. Over its history the PMC has now donated $122 million. And unlike many charities, the PMC passes on more than 90 percent—last year the figure reached 97 percent—of all donations it receives.

My brother's efforts have not gone unrecognized. Billy has been profiled in The New York Times. He spoke at a national leadership conference alongside Rudy Giuliani, Benazir Bhutto and Magic Johnson. He was featured in a documentary film with Russell Simmons and Richard Branson. The Boston Red Sox are now displaying the PMC logo on Fenway Park's left-field Green Monster. (It is rather amazing to hear broadcasters refer to a line drive off the PMC sign.) Last year he got to throw out the first pitch (and his shoulder) at a Red Sox-Yankees game. And in each of the past two years, Lance Armstrong, whose kinship with the PMC is natural, has donated a yellow jersey from his Tour de France victory that has been auctioned off to boost the cause.

I have been a PMC volunteer since the beginning, with tasks ranging from the lofty (speaker at the kickoff dinner) to the slightly less glamorous (garbage-hauler at a lunch spot along the 192-mile route from Sturbridge to Provincetown, Mass.) And last weekend I was the smallest of cogs in this remarkable, two-day enterprise that attracted more than 4,000 riders and 2,200 volunteers. On Sunday, I took my GO, PMC, GO sign about halfway up one of the ride's most heartbreaking hills, just 30 miles from the finish line. From my cozy spot in the shade I cheered, waved and watched in amazement as hundreds upon hundreds of riders huffed and puffed, pumped and agonized their way up this killer climb, 160 miles into their journey. Every one of them, of course, has a story. They ride for loved ones lost and for total strangers. And I couldn't help but compare them to the pampered, self-absorbed athletes about whom I write each week for NEWSWEEK. It shouldn't take another steroids scandal or another brawl between players and fans or another brutal on-ice mugging for us to recognize how terribly misguided we are about whom we choose as our society's heroes. My brother likes to tell his riders that they may be sitting on a cure for cancer. And $21 million, his goal for this year's gift, makes that a pretty compelling message. But in the meantime the PMC gives everyone—from the riders to the cheerleaders to the doctors and patients at the Dana-Farber—a little more hope for the future. And hope is a most precious thing indeed.

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.