Part 1
Portraits Director
Evan Disney

I can grow, I can learn, I can teach. Those are the three things in life that will always get you by! And here’s the thing about life, when you get stuck, any one of those three things, it will kick you ‘til you’re unstuck, whether you want to or not.

Evan Disney
Part 2
Illini 4000 Director of Information
Mark Zimmer

“I tell my friends all the time that what I do is look through the front of the windshield; I don’t look in the rearview mirror. You know what this is: you have to see the obstacles in front of you, and you go through them; they’re speed bumps. Some are bigger potholes; some are bigger bumps. You know, you gotta slow down a little bit more, from that standpoint, but there’s no use looking in the back. What’s behind you is behind you, and then look forward.”

Mark Zimmer
Part 2
Illini 4000 Director of Information
AnnMarie Cross

“I got ready to go to school, I went to say goodbye to Mom, but she wouldn’t wake up to say goodbye to me. I left for school, and couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. I knew something wasn’t right. Whatever power you’d like to say was involved, my mom knew that I needed to know, and I needed to get to say goodbye. The doctors said that she should never have woken up that day, she should’ve been gone first thing in the morning, that when she went into the coma, she should’ve been gone at that point, but when I got home from school at 10 after 3, she opened her eyes and said goodbye to me. She was gone at quarter after 3. She waited for me, to say goodbye.”

AnnMarie Cross
Part 1
Illini 4000 Director of Information
Michael Adams

“I am fortunate, it is a funny thing to say that you are fortunate when you have cancer but I mean I am fortunate I have seen people who are much worse off than I am, much sicker than I am. And I have seen people who are much younger than me much sicker than me, which I mean is just really a terrible thing to see.”

Michael Adams
Part 1
Illini 4000 Director of Information
Eric Smith

“In the Marine Corps, we’re taught this. When the enemy attacks, you don’t let the enemy attack. You assault the enemy. You press into them. So we got as much information as we could. He started eating right, started getting himself squared away and everything like that. He went through a nasty bout of chemo, lost a lot of weight. My brother…God bless him. My brother was a very vain man. He had long hair and he lost all of it. Well, he went into remission for a little while, got through the chemo. He just kept fighting.”

Eric Smith

Duodenal Cancer

Wendy Hughes

Wendy Hughes

“Be positive, because your mind is really powerful and it can help you. I also really believe that Eastern medicine is just as important as Western and all the things like acupuncture and massage and yoga and meditation are super important because they help your spirit as well as your body. And I think it helps you stay strong because you need to eat really well and work out and you know, stay as healthy as you can. I think…a lot of those things help with the side effects of the western medicine to not be as bad.”

2024 Team Fundraising Total: $60,000

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