Guest post by Dan Mccreesh
When Brent was diagnosed, some friends kindly developed a website to keep family and friends abreast of where he was – as he was rotating between Yale, home, Dana-Farber. The website morphed into a TeamBrent site, and we had an optin list that we used to spread the word before the advent of social media.
When Team BrentWheels rode its third PMC, Brent and I were cheering at the finish line alongside his two sisters. Brent was wearing a Lance Armstrong Discovery jersey that had been gifted to him by a former TB rider. One rider crossed the finish line in the same jersey as Brent and asked to take a picture with Brent to show their matching jerseys. Little did the unknown rider know what he was starting.
That rider was Ed White & he was riding with a stuffed lobster on his helmet. Ed gave four year old Brent the lobster and in return, Brent gave Ed the TeamBrent hat right off his head. We told Ed that Brent was a cancer survivor, and we hugged and each walked away profoundly moved. When Ed got home he looked up the website url that he had found on the side of the hat.
A friendship was born, and TeamBrent, who had been searching for a helmet mascot, seized on the lobster as a meaningful reminder of how strangers become family.
