Megan showed me the effort she has been on with people on the board to help OCF get noticed in a positive light by an organization that reveals the good and bad in the non-profit world. Obviously, I was hopeful that this site, which allows those who wish to find worthwhile charities to connect with, might help us reach out to potential funders, and perhaps even to others in need that might find us through that means.
Overall I'm a pretty stoic kinda guy. I was brought up to tough things out, not be gushy or express my emotions and so much more. I've only had my emotional wall broken a few times in my adult life. Vietnam, and the intensity of that experience in manners that I could never express in words to others, bonded me to my comrades in arms, and often in private brought me to tears at the loss and horror around me, combined with the knowledge that too many of those I treated as a medic were not going to make it, and they shared that end with me in the most personal of ways.
Cancer was another intense ride that threw me around emotionally like a play toy in dogs mouth. The combination of pain, hardcore drugs, fear, and the sense of loss, was crushing.
As those of you who have been around awhile know, I am not the most emotional of posters on the boards. I was hurt greatly by the early losses of some of the finest people that I have ever met here, and I defensively stay now to the science issues mostly, leaving the emotional support to others better qualified to give it.
In my gut I know that OCF does good. I see the research that we have helped pay for that elucidates new, useful information, whose application - like what we have learned about
HPV in the last 8 years- changing the face of screening and early diagnosis profoundly. I know that my testimony at government agencies has helped sway and alter policy that impacts the public good, as well as oral cancer patients specifically. I hear from others that my many, many lectures at universities, and interviews in the media have help teach, and increase understanding of our disease in both the public and the professional community, not to the extent that I would like, but it is an ongoing building process. So I am lucky to live this life of service that I have come to love and find so rich, and think of it now as one in which I finally, within my own self image- believe that I am, in a very small way, an agent of positive change, with my personal drive and OCF as the vehicles to accomplish very specific goals that our science board have helped me define.
But I was not prepared for the words in your postings about OCF, and certainly not your kind comments about me directly. I have to tell you that those of you that have articulated the good that you have found in OCF, touched me in a very profound way. Your very personal perspectives took me by surprise and raised a lump in my throat to read them. I don't really know what to say in response to them. That OCF which started as such a simple seed of an idea, could become what it has, a vehicle to actually do good in the world on such an individual and personal way, really speaks only to my tenacity, and more to the strengths of those of you who are the OCF family. Who come here during your treatments, and even in physical pain and emotional distress, find the inner strengths to put you own issues aside, and offer guidance, and emotional support to others. You are all truly heros in the purest sense of that word. Believe me I know of what I speak. And when I left the last batch of real world heros in a distant country decades ago, I thought I would never find their like again. I was wrong. It is a privilege to be in your company, and your expression of your positive feelings about OCF are the greatest reward I could every receive for the small part of it all that I play. I thank you all very much, for your support, for your caring, for your willingness to be part of the solution, and now for your kind words.
