by Stuart Scott
“Laura, I don’t know.”
“Trust me,” she said. “You’re going to love it.”
What could I do? She wouldn’t take no for an answer. And I thank God for that, because she was right. Monday night was one of the best nights of my life.
We took a limo to a Venice Beach address Laura had provided. It was me, Kristin, Sydni, Susan, Synthia, Stephen, Scottie, Brian, Deedee, and Barb; we’d be meeting Laura, her boyfriend Mike, and a few of our other close friends. In the limo on the way over, we signed Scottie up on Twitter—but for weeks he still couldn’t figure out how to post something or follow anyone.
Once we got there, we found a rusty metal door on an old brick wall that was covered by a mural. What the … ? Once you opened that door, though, it was like you entered a different dimension. Inside, the downstairs of the house—which belonged to friends of Laura and Mike—opened onto a breathtaking alfresco courtyard. There was a bar, a stage, catered Mexican food.
I didn’t have a lot of energy to be walking around, but that was fine—it wasn’t about me. It was about all these people who love me, and whom I love. Laura brought out another surprise—T-shirts for everyone. And not just any kind of T-shirt. Gray T-shirts that read “Fuck Cancer #stustrong” in black lettering.
Holla! When Laura pulled out the shirts, we all high-fived. A bunch of us put them on, and we took photos and posted them on Twitter. Over the next twenty-four hours, it started to blow up. Comments followed comments; most thought it was pretty cool. Some objected to the language.
We talked about that as soon as Laura started handing out the shirts. If someone said to me, “Hey, would you want your daughter wearing that?” I’d probably squirm a little. But you know what? It’s bigger than that. It’s not about that one bad word. It’s about the anger and the power and the fury behind what cancer is. You gotta spell out the word to get all that across.
Leave it to my big bro Stephen to have the line of the night when we were debating whether to have it spelled out. “Anyone complains, just tell ’em they’re right—cancer really is an offensive word.”
When someone on Twitter complained about the word, Susan responded: “Understand, it’s personal and a choice. Got mad love for your right to feel that way.”
I thought that was so smart. I totally get why you’d be upset if your kid saw that word on someone’s T-shirt. But, in this case, it’s the right word, man. It says: We’re not standing for this. We’re fighting back. Besides, your kid ever watch HBO? All right, then. Trust me, he or she ain’t no stranger to the F-bomb.
The next day, Laura said we should print up a lot of them and sell ’em online, with the proceeds going to cancer charities. Brilliant. She got right on it.
Meantime, dinner was a blast. Tony Ferrari, a young crooner with a touch of old soul, was the entertainment. He’s this baby-faced kid who can hit the high notes—his soulful cover of Sinatra’s “New York, New York” killed it.
As Tony was singing I started to feel a little chilly. Someone brought me a blanket as I sat on this big ol’ comfortable sofa, with Kristin on one side and Sydni on the other. While Tony sang, I FaceTimed Taelor so we could all share the moment together. I kept looking around at all these friends and loved ones. Lucky, I kept thinking. I’m so lucky. It was one of the best experiences of my life: to be with these people, listening to this music, loving this moment.
I had asked Laura earlier, “Hey, can Sydni sing with Tony?” She said sure. So they did a duet of a Christina Aguilera song. I also asked if they could do “Stay with Me.”
Man, they crushed it. My baby girl got up there and … I started bawling, watching her. She belted it out, so poised and self-assured. When she hit that last note, everyone erupted—applause, hoots, howls. “That’s my daughter! I taught her everything she knows!” I yelled.
This song was now, like, my anthem. You know what? As much as I wanted to see my parents, I knew I didn’t have the energy to go to North Carolina after all this. When Sydni plopped back down on the sofa next to me, I said: “If we leave here Thursday after the ESPYs and go straight back to Connecticut, can you still do the solo?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “They gave it to somebody else. I don’t think that would be fair.”
I texted the lady who runs the camp: “Listen, if Sydni is back Friday, can she sing?”
“We’d love to have Sydni” came the reply.
So it was settled. We’d go back so Sydni could sing “Stay with Me.” By the way, when she did sing it, a few days later, I noticed her hugging a young man after her part of the solo. The overprotective dad in me was ready to get in this young buck’s face, or at least give him the ol’ stink-eye stare. But then I realized: C’mon. It’s the middle of the afternoon and they hugged out in the open—nothing shady here. So I slinked away.
But that would be later. On this night, protecting Sydni from an innocent boy was the furthest thing from my mind. As Laura buzzed around, as Tony Ferrari crooned, as Scottie mingled with friends of mine he’d only ever heard about, I put my arm around my daughter and thanked God I could bring her back to sing “Stay with Me.” ’Cause she was smiling. And it felt right. It was some kind of sign that this song came out of nowhere to play such a role in my life in the past twenty-four hours.
• • •
MEANTIME, MY EGO GOT bruised while in Los Angeles.
Stephen, Scottie, Brian, and I were waiting in front of the hotel for our car. Now, picture us. Brian is 5′8″, but he’s a marine. Stocky, cut. Stephen is 5′10″, a big, strong guy. Scottie’s lean and in shape, and carries himself with that New York swagger. Pass him on the street and you’d give him a wide berth. And then there’s me—skinnier now, yes, but still athletically built.
And, outside of Stephen, all of us were experienced fighters. Minding our business in front of the hotel.
That’s when a pudgy guy in his early twenties came up first to Scottie. “Hey, can I borrow one of your guys’ phones?” he asked.
Scottie stared at him. “Look, I’m from New York,” he said. “I don’t carry my phone.”
The dude looked at me. “You’re not using my phone” was all I said.
The guy walked off. We laughed about Scottie’s response: “I’m from New York.” Seriously?
“I was trying to be polite,” Scottie said. “I never met Stephen before. Didn’t want to create a scene.”
As we were chuckling, the valet approached. “Hey, guys, listen,” he said. “If anybody asks to borrow your phone, don’t do it—they run off with them.”
Huh? That dude was going to race off with my phone?
Welcome to our Larry David moment. The four of us stood there, stewing. We didn’t feel like we’d dodged a bullet; no, we were insulted—how dare this pudgy little dude think he could rip us off and outrun us?
“He wouldn’t be able to take a step,” Scottie said. “Even in Stuart’s weakened state, he would have been annihilated.”
Now we wanted to give him our phones. We looked around for the guy. Our car had come, but we left it idling while we looked—phones at the ready. No luck. We couldn’t stop talking about it: Really? You’re going to steal from the four of us?
It became the week’s running joke: “Here—take my phone!” But don’t think we didn’t keep our eyes out for the phone bandit. Man, I wish I could run into him even to this day.
That got my adrenaline flowing. So we headed to the hotel gym—I’d just do a light workout. Get the blood flowing. Half hour on the elliptical, maybe some curls. When we were leaving, who walked in but Michael Sam and his boyfriend, Vito. Michael was getting the Arthur Ashe Courage Award for coming out before the NFL draft.
First, let me say: It was courageous. If you know anything about the locker room, especially at the pro level, coming out is nothing but brave. It’s great that Michael’s teammates at Missouri were tolerant and supportive, but an NFL locker room would present many more challenges. We chatted with Michael and
Vito—they’re great guys. I’m pulling for Michael to land with an NFL team. Then Brian got a bright idea; back into the gym we all went.
Brian invited Michael and Vito to play push-up poker with us. For years, we’d been playing this game Brian made up at his gym. It’s regular poker with a twist: Before doing a push-up you draw from the deck, and whatever the number on that card is, that’s how many push-ups you do. If you draw the color red, you have to do double the number on the card; if you get a jack, the person behind you has to do fifteen push-ups.
It can get to be a lot, man. Don’t tell my docs I hit the floor to do this. But I’m a push-up freak. After a while, three of us hadn’t folded. It was just me, Brian, and Vito, still pushing-up.
• • •
THERE ARE 7,100 SEATS in the Nokia Theatre, but it feels like more. I’d been on the stage before and knew how daunting and nerve-racking it could be for someone to stand up there, in front of a crowd of people like that. I’ve been in crowded auditoriums, but the look of this one when you’re on the stage can be pretty intimidating. The audience seems to kinda swoop upward—if you’re not careful, you can feel small before them.
Now, I like being nervous when I’m about to speak before a big crowd. It’s like I always told Sydni and Taelor: What are nerves? Energy. You can control your own energy. So take it and use it. How? Keep this in mind: That whole big crowd out there? What are they getting ready to do? Listen to you. They’re there to listen to you. So slow down, take your time. Be in charge.
During the show, Kiefer came out, said some kind words, and introduced the very moving set piece. When it was through and Kiefer called me up onstage, I kissed Susan, Sydni, and Kristin—in that order. The TV camera only caught me kissing Kristin as I stood up to go. If you watch the broadcast closely, you’ll see me stand up and ever so slightly hold on to the seat back in front of me to steady myself. That wasn’t nerves so much as physical weakness.
The sounds of Sam Smith’s “Stay with Me” mixed with applause. As I stepped into the aisle, I was channeling the energy of the crowd. Channeling it into a force. Taking that self-conscious, inner Oh, my God voice and turning it into: I got this. As I approached the stage, I’d done it; I had a swagger, that clutch confidence.
Walking up on that stage, my eyes locked on Jack Bauer’s. I’d met Kiefer once or twice before, but didn’t really know him. We hugged, and I said into his ear, “Dude, really honored that you did this.”
“I watched that video,” he said. “And I’m so honored to be here.”
He handed me the ESPY, and I stood at the mic. Game on.
“You know, tomorrow, all my boys are going to be like, ‘Yo, man, I saw you at the ESPYs with Peyton Manning, Money Mayweather, and KD …’” I said. “I’m gonna be like, ‘Yeah, whatever. Jack Bauer saved the world and he introduced me.’”
At that, I pulled the old Jay-Z gesture, flicking dirt off my shoulder. “24 is my favorite TV show of all time, so, Kiefer Sutherland, thank you very much. I’m very honored.”
The crowd applauded and Kiefer touched his right hand to his heart.
I talked about how I didn’t really feel like I deserved to be on that stage, in the same company with all the inspiring figures who had come before me. “Although intellectually I get it,” I said, “I’m a public figure, I have a public job, I’m battling cancer, hopefully I’m inspiring, but at my gut level, I didn’t really think I belonged with those great people. But I listened to what Jimmy Valvano said twenty-one years ago, the most poignant seven words uttered in any speech anywhere: ‘Don’t give up, don’t ever give up.’ Those people didn’t. Coach Valvano didn’t. I now have a responsibility to never give up. I’m not special; I just listened to what the man said.”
I went on to praise the Jimmy V Foundation, pointing out that its work had led directly to the clinical trial the video had just shown me undergoing. And then it came time for me to make a distinction I’d been thinking long and hard about.
“You heard me allude to it in the piece. I said, ‘I’m not losing—I’m still here, I’m fighting. I’m not losing,’” I said. “But I gotta amend that. When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live.”
I had to pause while the crowd applauded. This line would blow up on Twitter and be quoted in all the stories about the speech. Only it wasn’t exactly what I’d meant to say. Here’s the way I had written it: “You beat cancer by how you live while you live.” It wasn’t like I made a conscious decision to replace “while” with “why,” but even as I did, I grasped the reason for the change: Taelor and Sydni. They’re why I live, why I fight. I believe in God; I think he works through people. He worked through me giving that speech. He gave me the wherewithal to say what I needed to say.
The last line of that quote—“And in the manner in which you live”—was also ad-libbed. I chuckled later, thinking about it. Because while it sounds good in terms of the speech’s rhythm, it doesn’t really add anything: “How you live” is the same as “the manner in which you live.” Here I was feeling and sounding all profound—and I was being redundant.
Next, I directly addressed others in the fight. “So live,” I said. “Live. Fight like hell. And when you get too tired to fight, then lay down and let somebody else fight for you.” I thought of all the folks in my corner. That’s what they do for me: They let me lay down. I singled out, without naming him, one of my ESPN bosses, Mark Gross: “I got these amazingly wonderful people at ESPN,” I said. “I got corporate executives, my bosses, this is true, who will text-message, ‘Hey, I heard you had chemotherapy today. Want me to stop by on my way home from work, pick up something to eat, bring it to you?’ Seriously? Who does that? Whose bosses do that? My bosses do that.”
I’d debated with myself: Do I talk about all I’d gone through in the past week? It wasn’t pretty. But I had to keep it real. “But even with all that, the fight is still much more difficult than I even realized,” I said. “What you didn’t see in the piece is what’s gone on probably the last ten days. I just got out of the hospital this past Friday. Seven-day stay. Man, I crashed. I had liver complications. I had kidney failure. I had four surgeries in the span of seven days. I had tubes and wires running out of every part of my body, and, guys, when I say every part of my body, every part of my body… . As of Sunday, I didn’t even know if I could make it here. I couldn’t fight—”
The crowd applauded—points for just showing up.
“But doctors and nurses could,” I said. “The people that I love, my friends and family, they could fight. My girlfriend, who slept on a very uncomfortable cot by my side every night, she could fight. The people that I love did last week what they always do: They visited, they talked to me, they listened to me, they sat in silence sometimes—they loved me.”
Writing the speech, I’d originally meant to single out every one in my corner by name. Once I saw the video piece, though, I felt that wouldn’t fit. Still, there were some people I needed to talk about, like Kristin and the girls. And my big sister.
“I called my big sister Susan a few days ago,” I said. “Why? I needed to cry. It was that simple. I know that I can call her; I can call my other sister Synthia, my brother Stephen, my mom and dad, and I can just cry.”
What did I tell Susan when I called her? I told her I was tired. That I just wanted to cry. I was tired of putting on a front for people; they’d ask, “How you doing?,” and … it was just too much to go into it. That I’d started going into work late and heading straight for my office so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone until I was on the set. Because having to talk about my cancer just kept coming, in waves.
Susan did what she always does: She listened. Once, after my surgery in January 2011, she took me aside. “You don’t have to go through this again if you don’t want to,” she told me. “All you’ll have to do is say it. And we’ll get the best hospice care for you.”
In that and so many of our conversations, she had a way of saying something that just let me exhale. When she said that to me in 2011, I didn’t consider hospice. But it was a great relief just knowing that if I ever did, I wouldn’t be letting her down.
When I told her I wanted to cry, she said: “You should cry.” And I did.
Speaking of crying, I was afraid I’d break down when it came to the end of the speech, where I’d close by talking about, and to, the girls. I’d practiced this part hard, trying to keep my emotions in check. “The best thing I have ever done, the best thing I will ever do, is be a dad to Taelor and Sydni,” I said, to applause. “It’s true. I can’t ever give up, because I can’t leave my daughters. Yes, sometimes I embarrass them. Sometimes they think I am a tyrant … Taelor and Sydni, I love you guys more than I will ever be able to express. You two are my heartbeat.”
It sounds weird, but as I said it, I felt it. Standing on that stage, I felt them in my heartbeat.
“I am standing on this stage here tonight because of you. My oldest daughter, Taelor, I wanted her to be here, but college sophomore, second semester summer school starting this week, baby girl, I love you, but you go do that. My littlest angel is here, my fourteen-year-old. Sydni, come up here and give Dad a hug, because I need one.”
She didn’t know I was going to call her up. She’d taken her shoes off under her seat, and now, stunned, she couldn’t find them. She walked out to the aisle barefoot. As she strode to the stage—all eyes on her—I said, “I want to say thank you, ESPN, thank you, ESPYs, thank all of you. Have a great rest of your night and have a great rest of your life.” I had been planning on ending with “Have a good rest of the night” when one of the producers suggested “Have a great rest of your life,” which I loved.
The crowd stood, applauding. By the time I’d finished speaking, Sydni was in front of me, the notes of—what else?—“Stay with Me” filled the air, and then my baby girl was in my arms … and we held on tight. “This is why I needed you here,” I said in her ear, repeating my mantra from when we first watched the video together forty-eight hours earlier. Man, we hugged tight. I didn’t want it to end.