Dear President Linton,
I was shocked and a little alarmed to hear that you’ve got cancer.
News like that is always a shock; my alarm comes from the fact that, in the year-and-a-half that you’ve been on the job, you’ve struck me as the right guy at the right time. So, you know, what happens now?
My second reaction, though, is compassion, and I’d like to offer some perspective that perhaps can provide optimism. My dad got throat cancer in 1998, when he was a couple years younger than you are right now. Treatment was no fun, but it got the job done, and he lived, worked and played another 25 years.
I’d like to say it gave him a better perspective, or mellowed him, or had some profound change on his temperament, but that’s not true. If anything, it seemed to make him more determined to grind away daily at what he needed to do. Which, of course, led to lots more personal and professional success.
People say cancer treatments wear you down, and I’m certain that’s true. I never saw that with my dad. It’s almost as if they just pissed him off.
Partly that’s because he went to Houston for treatment, and was therefore gone for weeks, and I didn’t see him then. The Mercury went on, mostly because he had set it up to run itself with great department-level leaders. I think my presence also helped ease his mind a bit. We talked almost daily, before cell phones.
Incidentally, since you can now work remotely, I’d imagine you’ll stay much more intimately involved. K-State is, uhh, a bit more complicated than a small-town newspaper. Dad did also keep up all his association work, and was in fact at that time on the board that awards the Pulitzer Prize. He did all the reading. Three years later he was the chairman of that board.
Also, incidentally, I can always remember when Dad’s cancer treatment occurred because I’ll never forget the landline phone call from Houston to the football stadium. We were on the line together when Jeff Kelly scooped up the fumble, yelling ourselves hoarse. K-State beat Nebraska for the first time in my lifetime.
Point is, life goes on. The man coaching that game, of course, got throat cancer 19 years later and continued to coach. Bill Snyder beat the cancer the way he beat everybody else: Putting one foot in front of the other, working his way through it.
Those are two of the men I admire most; the coincidence is odd, but I hope it provides you some comfort. For those of us who want the best for K-State, we want the best for you. And those examples give me, at least, some confidence.
