First I would like to thank all of you who have sent me emails, cards, and called to wish Ingrid and I well and a Merry Christmas. Your kind words and thoughts are greatly appreciated, and we have come to think of you all as an extended family. While so many of you have thanked me for my efforts, it is really I who should thank you for the manner in which your inspiration and courage have enriched my life. I have learned so very much from all of you. OCF has grown a great deal in this last year, with significant additions to the web content, and most of all, in the number of caring people who participate in the message boards. The foundation has indeed, become a viable part of the landscape and continues to attract more and more readers to the site. We now consistently have over one million hits per month on the website, quite remarkable for something that is only 18 months old. While I am pleased to see OCF become a useful contribution to the oral cancer cause, those million hits per month and the passing of the 500th message board member sadden me, as they of course mark the continued destruction of friends and family caused by our mutual enemy. Like so many years before, this year we again have lost too many of our loved ones and friends.

I will continue to write and build the informational aspects of OCF, and participate in the support functions of OCF such as the message board, but we need to now bring our collective weight to bear on the problems that allow this killer to continue unchallenged. In the near future I will be asking all of you to join with me in a letter and email writing campaign directed at those most capable of bringing about a change in the status quo. We could be diagnosing this disease at earlier, curable stages, but our dental and medical communities are not doing so. For a disease that can be seen with the naked eye in many cases as an early survivable cancer, too few professionals are actually looking for it. Too many patients are misdiagnosed in the early stages, and their cancer allowed to grow and prosper into a killer. One needs only to read the postings on this board to find too many examples of these issues. I will need your help in the future not as survivors and family members, or treating professionals, but as activists. Together we can make a difference, not just in each other

Brian, stage 4 oral cancer survivor. OCF Founder and Director. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.