A shout out to my niece.

[*michaelsean*]

Now she will never see this, but I still thought I'd give her some kudos. In 2012 her father, my brother died of a glio blastoma. She was a year younger than my daughter so she would have been a freshman in high school. The doctors said that the tumor was almost certainly caused by radiation my brother received when he was a senior in high school for Hodgkins. Very shortly after his death my niece got with her guidance counselor and said she wanted to do something positive. Together they came up with Night for the Fight underneath the umbrella of Cancer Free Kids. About 9 months after my brother died they held the first one at Cintas Center. It's basically a walk-a-thon. High school kids create teams and they go out and get donations. They have inspirational speakers and quite a few children who are cancer survivors attend, and then they walk around the Cintas Center all night long.

I think they had 300 kids that first year and I'm not sure how much they raised. Probably $50,000. A heck of a start for pulling it off so quickly. This year which I believe is their 5th they had 1300 kids and raised $205,000. I believe their total expenses were less than $1500. Pretty good for a 20yr old.

To quote Geral McRaney in "This is Us", "You took the sourest lemon life has to offer, and turned it into something resembling lemonade".