I am once again riding the Pan Mass Challenge (PMC) this summer to raise much needed funds for the battle against cancer.  I first rode the PMC over 30 years ago.  Much has changed since then in our lives and in the world, but what has not changed is the toll cancer takes on humankind year in and year out around the world.  I will ride once again with my wife Jenny, who was treated for breast cancer by Dana-Farber in 2021, and is now a Living Proof rider.  

In my past appeals for support, I have mentioned the long list of family members lost to cancer, which sadly has many horrible symmetries.  My mother was one of three siblings in her family.  All three of them died of cancer, in age order, my mother being the first, and the youngest, my uncle Allen Staley, just passed away last October, losing a long battle with kidney cancer.  He led an extraordinary life as a professor of art history at Columbia for 30+ years, beautifully described in his obituary. Their mother (my grandmother) also succumbed to cancer, which means four out of their immediate family of five were diagnosed with cancer, each with a different type, and none of them beat it. 

Another sad symmetry, starting with a wonderful family tradition of passing down first names, such as Martha being the name of my grandmother, mother, sister and niece.  The first three Matha’s died of cancer.  Among the many reasons to ride the PMC is to break this atrocious pattern, with hopes that my niece and many more Marthas to come will live a long cancer-free life. 

The list goes on:  Jenny’s cousin Megan lost her battle to cancer in January 2022, my cousin Nina succumbed just one month later, and my sister-in-law Amy passed away in January 2023, after a 2 ½ year battle with glioblastoma.  Megan was just 39.  Amy and Nina both made it past 60, but robbed of what should have been their golden years. 

During most of my years riding the PMC I’d never actually seen the patient journey up close inside Dana-Farber at its Boston headquarters. So after all these years of peddling my heart out for the cause, in early 2021 I found myself as the sole permitted companion at Jenny’s side (extremely restricted visitation protocols at that time because of COVID), sitting in front of a renowned Dana-Farber oncologist, clinging to hope that Jenny would be one of the fortunate ones to make it to the other side.  Dana-Farber’s facilities are impressive and patient friendly, but those details quickly fade as you observe countless patients being wheeled in and out, many with no hair, many gaunt from months or years of chemo, and large numbers of them just trying to buy a few extra months of life and maybe a slight uptick in the quality of the short life they have left.    

Jenny and I both raise money specifically for Team Duncan, which supports the women’s oncology group within Dana-Farber and provided Jenny with worldclass care, skillfully navigating her to a cure.  The team has about 90 riders and is named for our longtime team captain, Duncan Finigan, who we lost to breast cancer in 2019 at the age of 59.