Jimmy V's amazing speech

So, This is Jimmy V week on ESPN. For those of you too young to remember him, he was a college basketball coach in the 80's and 90's (I know, I am getting old as you would have been babies or not even born yet! sigh).
Anyway, he was funny and passionate - a riot to watch on the side line. He was also very good and even won the NCAA tournament once.
He got bone cancer and by the time they found it the cancer had metastasized/spread all over his body. He died less than a year after his diagnosis, but in that time he formed the Jimmy V Foundation to awareness about cancer and money for research into a cure.
ESPN partnered with him in that endeavor and that year they gave him the Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award at the ESPYs. I saw that broadcast and bawled my eyes out. But his speech was so profound that I go back to it over and over.

Valvano was in the final stages of his battle with cancer when he gave the speech. He had to be helped across the stage by friends dick Vitale and Mike Kryzewski. Those in the audience knew they were likely seeing his last public appearance and, in fact, he passed away 2 months after he gave this speech..

I edited the speech here (it's kind of long). I did not insert any on my own words or change any of his. I just removed a few things. You can google it and get the entire transcript, or watch it on ESPN or YouTube. It is thought provoking and can really make you reflect on your own life.

I’m going to speak longer than anybody else has spoken tonight. That’s the way it goes. Time is very precious to me. I don’t know how much I have left, and I have some things that I would like to say. Hopefully, at the end, I will have said something that will be important to other people, too.

Now I’m fighting cancer, everybody knows that. People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how’s your day, and nothing is changed for me. As Dick said, I’m a very emotional and passionate man. I can’t help it. That’s being the son of Rocco and Angelina Valvano. It comes with the territory. We hug, we kiss, we love.

When people say to me how do you get through life or each day, it’s the same thing. To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. Number three is you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.

… and I always have to think about what’s important in life to me are these three things. Where you started, where you are and where you’re going to be. Those are the three things that I try to do every day.

…It’s so important to know where you are. I know where I am right now. How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. You have to be willing to work for it.

I talked about my family; my family’s so important. People think I have courage. The courage in my family are my wife Pam, my three daughters, here, Nicole, Jamie, LeeAnn, my mom, who’s right here too. That screen is flashing up there 30 seconds like I care about that screen right now, huh? I got tumors all over my body. I’m worried about some guy in the back going, “30 seconds?”

I just got one last thing; I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get your emotions going. To be enthusiastic every day, and Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing great could be accomplished without enthusiasm,” to keep your dreams alive in spite of problems whatever you have. The ability to be able to work hard for your dreams to come true, to become a reality.
Now I look at where I am now, and I know what I want to do. What I would like to be able to do is spend whatever time I have left and to give, and maybe, some hope to others. Arthur Ashe Foundation is a wonderful thing, and AIDS, the amount of money pouring in for AIDS is not enough, but it is significant. But if I told you it’s ten times the amount that goes in to cancer research. I also told you that 500,000 people will die this year of cancer. And I also tell you that one in every four will be afflicted with this disease. And yet somehow, we seem to have put it in a little bit of the background. I want to bring it back on the front table.

We need your help. I need your help. We need money for research. It may not save my life. It may save my children’s lives. It may save someone you love. And it’s very important. And ESPN has been so kind to support me in this endeavor and allow me to announce tonight, that —we are starting the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research. And its motto is, “Don’t give up . . . don’t ever give up.”

And that’s what I’m going to try to do every minute that I have left. I will thank God for the day and the moment I have. If you see me, smile and maybe give me a hug. That’s important to me too. But try if you can to support, whether it’s AIDS or the cancer foundation, so that someone else might survive, might prosper and might actually be cured of this dreaded disease.

…I thank you, and God bless you all.

Kathy