Don't give up

ESPN is doing its annual fund-raiser for the Jimmy V cancer fund. Jim Valvano was a college basketball coach who died of cancer in 1993. Two images of him will forever stick in my mind. In 1983 his team, the North Carolina State Wolfpack, shocked the basketball world by winning the national championship. When the game was over, he was giddily running around, looking for somebody to hug. (key point starts at 30 seconds in). And then his speech at the ESPYs in 1993. His friends, Mike Krzyzewski and Dick Vitale, helped him to the stage. There, he spoke from his heart and soul about life--what to do and how to live it. It was funny, inspiring, emotional. He left the stage with this thought:

"Cancer can take away all my physical ability. It cannot touch my mind; it cannot touch my heart; and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever."

Valvano died two months after the speech. But his spirit and his legacy remain strong.