Daloth
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2011
- Messages
- 6,727
- Likes
- 1,403
I'm normally not one to do an emotional type post of any kind, however today is a bit different. Normally I'd be ecstatic at the commits we've gotten today and the great way the NFL draft went for the Vols, but I'm really not able because today marks the 5 year anniversary of my father's death from Pancreatic Cancer.
I'll spoiler the more personal/less vol related stuff for everyone, and if it needs to be moved feel free, but since it involved Tee Martin, and that the football frum is the most depressed board usually I figured it would do best here.
They thought he would make it a few years. After the whipple procedure and the 30 days straight of chemo and radiation, he just never got better. He went back a few weeks after and they confirmed it had spread to multiple organ systems. He denied any and all further treatment. He lasted about 4 months after that.
After the terminal diagnosis I got on here and mentioned the fact that he had a Tee Martin uniform from the first BCS championship that one of the people who made them had gave to him and was hoping I might be able to get a tweet or anything from Tee or a former player about it for him.
What happened was far beyond my expectations. A poster, LWSVol, sent me an e-mail because he knew someone who could get in touch with Tee (this was when Tee was at USC.) I sent the jersey to Tee explaining the situation and never really heard back at the start.
In the month or so that went between me sending it and getting the jersey back he would often message about how glad he was we were finally going to be good in Football again it seemed, and how bummed he was he wasn't going to see us be good one last time (That year would end up being Dooley's last,) so in the end I think there was quite a bit of heartache he never had to suffer as a fan, and for that I'm glad.
Later one weekend I got home from college and saw a package from California waiting on the porch. I waited for my mom to get home before I gave it to my father, and he put on the last real and genuine smile I remember seeing him have. He was always blunt and open about his sickness and he immediately joked "You all can just bury me in this."
A week later he was so drugged up he couldn't remember my mother's name and it took three people to keep him down when he would fight sleep or try to do anything. Two weeks after that he died, with a smile on his face.
We ended up getting that jersey and his old high school jersey framed, not even for it being valuable from being an official jersey signed by the first ever BCS champion, but because it was something that made my father, at his literal last days, feel like nothing was wrong at all and smile like he was a little kid. And I can think of very few things in the world that would have made him as happy as that jersey made him then.
We bemoan this team sometimes, and deservedly so. I've done it more than a few times in recent years. But there are next to other sports fans and players beyond Volunteers who would go as far as LWSvol and Tee Martin did to make a total stranger feel better.
Many of us didn't choose to be Vol fans, we were born near Knoxville or into families that already were, and we often gain or lose fans and players all the time, it's the nature of the beast.
But acts like that are what show, even if you aren't a former player, there is such thing as a Vol For Life. And though sometimes our win/loss record isn't something to be proud of, we should always be proud of how many of our players, coaches, and fans would go above and beyond to help each other.
I'll spoiler the more personal/less vol related stuff for everyone, and if it needs to be moved feel free, but since it involved Tee Martin, and that the football frum is the most depressed board usually I figured it would do best here.
When he was diagnosed years ago we were a bit optimistic because they caught it early (for Pancreatic Cancer) and he was in excellent shape for his age. He was always a fighter. The youngest of 4 sons in the 60's/early 70's and by the time he was 14 he could take any of his older brothers in a fight (if not for my grandfather and several other people telling me these things I wouldn't have believed them.) My grandparents never wanted him to play football, they wanted him to work logging, so he would ride his bike a few miles to school or practice every day and play every week with them only going to one game in his entire high school career. The week my grandparents told him they were getting a divorce he played Porter High School out of Knoxville (we call them Alcoa now) and he set a then state record punt return of 99 yards to win it. I'm not sure I would've believed it if I didn't see the newspaper or hear it from the coaches or fans who saw it. I even once gave blood and the man who drew my blood happened to be a senior on that Porter team and he remembered "a little white kid who wasn't even a buck fifty outrunning every damn one of us." He had a scholarship for Carson Newman, but he went to Indiana for a few years to work with his friends instead and came back to marry my mother. They lasted 33 years until he died, so I guess it was the right decision.
They thought he would make it a few years. After the whipple procedure and the 30 days straight of chemo and radiation, he just never got better. He went back a few weeks after and they confirmed it had spread to multiple organ systems. He denied any and all further treatment. He lasted about 4 months after that.
After the terminal diagnosis I got on here and mentioned the fact that he had a Tee Martin uniform from the first BCS championship that one of the people who made them had gave to him and was hoping I might be able to get a tweet or anything from Tee or a former player about it for him.
What happened was far beyond my expectations. A poster, LWSVol, sent me an e-mail because he knew someone who could get in touch with Tee (this was when Tee was at USC.) I sent the jersey to Tee explaining the situation and never really heard back at the start.
In the month or so that went between me sending it and getting the jersey back he would often message about how glad he was we were finally going to be good in Football again it seemed, and how bummed he was he wasn't going to see us be good one last time (That year would end up being Dooley's last,) so in the end I think there was quite a bit of heartache he never had to suffer as a fan, and for that I'm glad.
Later one weekend I got home from college and saw a package from California waiting on the porch. I waited for my mom to get home before I gave it to my father, and he put on the last real and genuine smile I remember seeing him have. He was always blunt and open about his sickness and he immediately joked "You all can just bury me in this."
A week later he was so drugged up he couldn't remember my mother's name and it took three people to keep him down when he would fight sleep or try to do anything. Two weeks after that he died, with a smile on his face.
We ended up getting that jersey and his old high school jersey framed, not even for it being valuable from being an official jersey signed by the first ever BCS champion, but because it was something that made my father, at his literal last days, feel like nothing was wrong at all and smile like he was a little kid. And I can think of very few things in the world that would have made him as happy as that jersey made him then.
We bemoan this team sometimes, and deservedly so. I've done it more than a few times in recent years. But there are next to other sports fans and players beyond Volunteers who would go as far as LWSvol and Tee Martin did to make a total stranger feel better.
Many of us didn't choose to be Vol fans, we were born near Knoxville or into families that already were, and we often gain or lose fans and players all the time, it's the nature of the beast.
But acts like that are what show, even if you aren't a former player, there is such thing as a Vol For Life. And though sometimes our win/loss record isn't something to be proud of, we should always be proud of how many of our players, coaches, and fans would go above and beyond to help each other.
