September 18, 2024

Part 1

Portraits Director

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.

May 24, 2023

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.”

May 24, 2023

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.”

May 24, 2023

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.”

May 24, 2023

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.”

Pancreatic Cancer

Illini 4000 Director of Information

May 24, 2023

Part 1

Dorothy Callison

Illini 4000 Director of Information

May 24, 2023

Part 1

“Fight, don’t let it get you. Fight. I had grandchildren born the whole 10 years, I had something to fight for, I had new babies, my daughter’s got seven kids and the only reason she has 7 is because she had them all during the whole 10 years, she was pregnant the whole time pretty much. Fight. Don’t just let it go. Even though I am where I am, I’m alive. And I have done a lot in the last 13 years that have helped other people. Some people just figure they have cancer and that’s it. Fight. Don’t let it get ya’. They’re curing an awful lot of it these days.”

Dorothy Callison

2024 Team Fundraising Total: $60,000

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