Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 9 No. 5 | May 2017

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10 Inside Hokie Sports
It was about this time last year that I wrote
a column in this space about my dad’s (Mark)
battle with multiple myeloma. In the past
12 months, I’m sure a lot has happened in
everyone’s life. For me, many of those things
have involved the Hokies. Some have involved
the Hokies and my dad. And recently, one has
involved a Hokie student-athlete, the Hokie
community and my dad.
The former two have included bucket-
list items for me, such as calling the ACC
Championship Game, the NCAA Men’s
Basketball Tournament and my dad being
able to be in attendance for the greatest
comeback in Virginia Tech football history in
the Belk Bowl. It was an experience he called,
“the most fun he has ever had.” However, it is
the latter that I am feeling the most grateful
for, as I write to you a year later.
First, I have been consistently overwhelmed
at how many times Hokies have come up to
me to ask how my dad is doing. Fortunately,
the answer is that he is doing great. He is in
full response, which is as close to remission as
you currently can get with multiple myeloma.
He has resumed many of his passions,
including golf and travel, and he has traveled
to Blacksburg twice in the past year. It has
been rewarding for me to see his face when he
visits and Hokies come up to lend a well wish
or a positive thought.
So things are good. He’s begun his process
of kicking cancer in the butt, as he set out to
do. However, I don’t think I will ever truly
shake the fear of losing him. Realistically, I
understand the inevitable nature of mortality,
but it was a smack in the face—a wake-up call.
I also have a brother, Ben, who is three years
younger than me. As we have both recklessly
meandered through life over the years, I have
had a passing thought as to what it might do
to our family if something ever happened to
him—or me. But it was just that, passing. I
never mentally played out what that scenario
would feel like.
For Hokies student-athlete Joey Slye,
reality is incomprehensibly more than a
passing thought. Tragically, he lost his older
brother, A.J., to acute myeloid leukemia
(AML) while still in high school. Unlike me,
he knows that hurt, but more importantly, he
now knows how we would respond.
The day after the Maroon-Orange Spring
Game, I was honored to witness first hand
what that response looks like. What it looks
like is Joey impressively morphing into an
event planner — racing around the indoor
practice facility to show food trucks where to
park, place volunteers in the proper locations
and maniacally checking and re-checking
silent auction slips. It looks like his mom,
Laura, handing out instructions and hugs in
equal measure. It looks like his dad, Dave,
sprinting from one end of the football field
to the other with “Help Joey Kick Cancer”
bracelets to hand out and scripts to keep the
event running effectively.
It also looks like present and past members
of the football program playing corn hole in
support of their brother. It looks like every
member of the coaching staff showing up on a
rare day off with their families to lend a hand.
It looks like student-athletes from numerous
other Virginia Tech sports programs serving
as volunteers. It looks like campus police
officers playing bubble soccer. It looks like
Virginia Tech photographer extraordinaire
Dave Knachel manning a photo booth for four
hours … and the list goes on and on.
Most importantly, it looks like a community
rallying around one of its own for something
of vital importance. It rained all day. It was
cold and dreary. It didn’t matter. It looked like
Ut Prosim (“That I May Serve”).
Slye has volunteered to campaign for The
Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Man of
the Year Award. That means he has assembled
a team, including myself, that gives roughly
two months in the interest of raising money
for research of blood cancers. The team that
raises the most for its candidate helps that
candidate become the person of the year.
Obviously, everyone wins.
The scene that I was previously describing
came during the signature event of Joey’s
campaign, the “Be the Match” event.
To me, it also looked like progress. It
looked like more dollars in the research pool.
It looked like more donors in the database. It
with
Jon
Laaser
Fighting Back