Sandy & Chris Pablo

My hanai brother, Chris Pablo, was memorialized yesterday.  It was a final public sendoff for a man who is the heart and soul of my book, The Marrow in Me.  The picture on the cover is of me recreating Chris Pablo’s great golf ball discovery.  For those who need a refresher, or those who are new to my blog and The Marrow in Me story, Chris found a special ball in his basket at the driving range some 14 years ago.  The ball had the words BEAT LEUKEMIA stamped on the side.   Chris was diagnosed with the same disease just weeks prior.  Finding the ball gave him hope that he would find a cure for his cancer.  He did, with a bone marrow transplant that came from a man missing most of his legs.

By the time we got around to creating the cover shot of The Marrow in Me, Chris wasn’t well enough to do it.  So I did it for him.  We’d lose Chris a month after the book was released, but he had a chance to read through much of it.  He called to playfully scold me, “You kept me up all night and made me cry,” he said a few months back.

I’d be honored if you’d read the book to get to know the man behind the video clip below.  Without Chris I never would have been a bone marrow donor myself.  And because of Chris sharing his story, 86 other people searching for a bone marrow donor got their match and went to transplant too.  The book is inspiring, witty, tragic and triumphant.  Some have compared it to Tuesdays with Morrie.  A sizable chunk of the proceeds is going to cancer treatment and research programs, including The Hawaii Bone Marrow Donor Registry, which played a key role in Chris’s transplant and mine.  And if you really want to honor Chris, please click here to register as a potential bone marrow donor.  That’s probably the best way we can honor his memory.  Aloha and Mahalo, Kevin.       

Watch Video Clip of Chris Pablo Memorial

The golf ball that started a revolution and the man who found it, Chris Pablo

We lost a very good friend who found a most interesting golf ball that took on a life of its own years ago.  Chris Pablo died in Honolulu yesterday at the age of 59, from complications of cancer unrelated to his original leukemia diagnosis back in 1996.  I’ve blogged about Chris before and I wrote a book about his life and mine called The Marrow in Me.  I won’t pretend that everyone has been with me from the beginning, so I’ll include a little background.  

Chris is the man who found an amazing golf ball that sparked my journey to becoming a bone marrow donor and author of The Marrow in Me.

 Click here for Chris Pablo Tribute.

Chris found the golf ball in his basket years ago.  It was old, discolored and had the words beat leukemia stamped on the side.  Chris was diagnosed with leukemia just three weeks prior.  Together and with the help of plenty of others in the Hawaii media, Chris and I told the Hawaii Community about his efforts to find an unrelated bone marrow donor.   People couldn’t get enough of the golf ball hook.  Chris’s story inspired other leukemia patients like two-year-old Alana Dung to come forward.  The community responded and largely because of Chris and Alana, 30-thousand people registered as potential bone marrow donors.  Eighty-six people went to transplant, including me; for a 16-year-old boy I’d never met.  Chris found his lifesaving match from a legless man who saw the media coverage.  Alana found her match in an international registry.

Alana Dung, inspired 30,000 people to register as potential donors

Chris had been sick for the last several months, but well enough a few months back to come to Boston to visit colleges with his youngest son Zack and family.   He called me and told me we should get together.  I suspected it might be our last chance to see each other.  It was.  I was so glad to see him one last time and my young daughters were thrilled to finally meet the man Daddy’s been writing about in The Marrow in Me for all these years.  My picture of Chris and my girls sitting on the steps of the old Boston Police Station is one of my treasures and it’s included in the book with a note directly to Chris in the epilogue.  Before the book went to print I emailed him the pdf file.  “You kept me up all night and made me cry,” he said when he called the next day.

When Chris took a turn for the worse in October I rushed him one of the first printed copies of my book The Marrow in Me.  I wanted him to hold it in his hands before his time.  His wife Sandy says he did.  That just meant the world to me and so did his friendship.  Without that crazy golf ball I never would have become a bone marrow donor and certainly wouldn’t have written a book about it.

L to R, Amanda Walsh, Chris Pablo, Samantha Walsh. Boston, August 2009

Chris taught me so much about obligation, “the obligation of survivorship” as he called it.  He taught me it’s okay and effective to allow yourself to be vulnerable in front of people.  When a man tells you something like that with tears in his eyes, it’s profound and people listen.  Chris’s courage and love for his family planted the seed in me to be the type of father and husband I hope I’ve become.  I could go on and on, but you get the point.  We lost a very good man and for that I am so sad.    

Chris Pablo and Kevin Walsh, Washington, September 2008

Below in blue highlighted text, ESPN’s Rick Reilly writes about Chris Pablo, a key character in my book The Marrow in Me.

Why I love my job

Someone once asked me, “Why write about sports?” Here’s the answer

By Rick Reilly
ESPN The Magazine
Archive

Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images Tom Brady is one of the many reasons Rick Reilly loves covering sports.

 This column appears in the December 14 issue of ESPN The Magazine, which is the ESPN 100 year-in-review issue.

 When I was a college sophomore and just starting to write for the Boulder sports section, my journalism professor edged me aside, looked me in the eye and said, “You’re better than sports.”

 Lurching into my fifth decade in this business, I still think she’s wrong. I will never be better than sports. This is why:  Sports is real. It can’t be faked. If you’re Henry Fonda’s son and you want to act, you get to act. If you’re Chelsea Clinton and want to govern, you get to govern. But just because you’re Nolan Ryan’s son doesn’t mean you get to pitch in the Show. Money, family, looks mean diddly in sports. If Tom Brady suddenly can’t throw the 30-yard out, he’s benched, dimple or no dimple.

 Sports is Oprah for guys. I knew a Boston dad and son who hadn’t spoken in five years. Some disagreement that just grew too big to see around. But when the Red Sox won it all in 2004, the son came home. They hugged and cried and laughed, and if you think it was about baseball, you don’t know men.

Sports fans can be buried in a coffin that is painted in their favorite team’s colors and logo. Anybody buried in a Chicago Symphony Orchestra coffin lately?

 Sports has mercy. The big and strong take care of the small and weak. In an Illinois prep football game this year, a Downers Grove South kick returner broke into the open at the 40 and was gone. Except, when he got to the 1-yard line, he stopped and went out of bounds. He and his teammates wanted to get an autistic teammate the only touchdown of his life. He got it on the second play. Ever see that on Wall Street?

 Sports is woven deeper into American life than you know. You may change religion or politics, but not teams. “I was raised a Packers fan and taught my kids the same,” writes a mom in Milwaukee. “Everyone comes to my house for games. My oldest son is battling addiction, and he comes too. We shout and curse and eat green and gold food. Whatever the joy or drama in our lives, we live and die with the Packers together.”

  Sports has no gray areas. It’s black or white, win or lose, hero or goat. Nobody has to form a committee to figure it out. Not true in dance or art. Who was better, head to head, Matisse or Monet? If it were sports, we’d know. (Matisse, 13-8.)

Sports is unscripted. President Obama just went to China, a trip choreographed from touchdown to takeoff. He knew exactly where he’d sit and eat and what he’d say. Knew it before he left. And yet, in the PGA Championship this year, a nobody named Y.E. Yang came from behind to beat the god named Tiger Woods. No wonder Obama doesn’t watch Headline News. He watches SportsCenter.

 College football teams fill 100,000-seat stadiums. Seen the history department do that?

 Sports has honor. In a Texas girls high school volleyball playoff this season, one of the East Texas Christian Academy girls suffered a head injury and was taken away on a stretcher. The East Texas girls were too upset to continue and forfeited. But their opponents — Summit Christian — refused. They insisted on rescheduling. They said they couldn’t win that way. And yet last year in Alaska, Senator Ted Stevens (R) ran for reelection despite seven felony convictions.

 Sports has the best words, and every CEO steals them. It’s a slam dunk. It’s a grand slam. It’s a complete whiff. And yet, in 32 years, I have never heard an athlete say, “That was just a total filibuster out there!”

 If sportswriters are so trivial, why did Frank Sinatra want to be one? Hell, the first Heisman winner, Jay Berwanger, turned his nose up at being the NFL’s No. 1 draft pick in 1936 to write for the Chicago Daily News. Berwanger said, “It paid better.”

 Sports has a heart the size of a knuckleball mitt. A man in Oahu named Chris Pablo once found a golf ball stamped with the words BEAT LEUKEMIA. Weird, since he’d just learned he had leukemia. Pablo decided he hadn’t found the ball, the ball had found him. His story got out and, next thing you know, hundreds of people volunteered for bone marrow donation. Now there are purposely lost balls on courses all over the country that say BEAT LEUKEMIA. Golfers find them and feel obligated to help. Sometimes they don’t just save $3 — they save a life.

Lastly — and most important — sports is the place where beer tastes best.

 So here’s to you, professor. I’m glad to know I’m not better than sports. But you did show me I’m better than one thing: advice from professors.

 Love the column, hate the column, got a better idea? Go here.
Want more Life of Reilly? Then check out the archive.
Be sure to check out Rick’s latest project, “Go Fish.”

Talk about coming full circle.  I used to deliver The Times Chronicle in my Meadowbrook, PA neighborhood.  I think I got like 30-cents a delivery back then.  Today a feature story about the boy who never missed your driveway–ok well maybe a couple of times.