I Was Picked

by Howard Shapiro

  “He told me the second time I saw him that he had cancer,” said Lena. “He kept it short but didn’t want me to feel bad. Those were his exact words. He wanted me to know that he was positive about the outcome, whether it destroyed his parents’ hearts or if it meant he would live his life and become an old man one day.”

  Their friendship continued to grow. They spent long blocks of time on the phone each night. John eventually became less afraid to talk to her about what he was going through. “Some days were okay and some were a struggle,” Lena said. “Either way, he was always on a positive note. He told me there were a few things he wanted to do before he passed, number one being [to] graduate with his class. He also wanted to go on a cruise and attend some sporting events, all of which he was able to accomplish.

  “In his last few months, I will say [it] was the closest we ever were. We made many, many arrangements for me to go over and check out his . . . hobby-related collections and meet his family and even get to meet his grandma. Each time I was supposed to go over . . . he was afraid for me to see him so weak and sick. One day he actually said to me, ‘I really want you to meet my grandma, but I don’t want you to see me this way.’ I was willing to see him, but because of his . . . not wanting me to see him so weak, I chose to say, ‘That’s okay.’ I told him there would be a next time and he would be feeling more up to it, and that it was better he would spend the time with his grandma because no one was promised tomorrow. He said, ‘Every day I wake up, I thank the Lord for giving me another day.’ The next time I was supposed to go over and meet his family and grandma . . . he was getting worse. The conditions were bad. I never did meet his grandma and get to see his collections.”

  Lena’s was not the only new friendship John struck up that year. That summer, after a family trip to Myrtle Beach, Dan Lentz arranged a golf outing for himself, John, and Herb Pope, a six-foot-seven forward from the neighboring Aliquippa High School. Herb was as big a name as there was that year in Pittsburgh-area high school sports. He went on to play college basketball for one year at New Mexico State before finishing his career at Seton Hall. John had met him once before at a Freedom versus Aliquippa basketball game the prior winter.

  The outing started slow; Herb did not have clubs or really any idea how to play golf. He had never been on a golf course before. Still, he was very kind to John as they talked the whole round. On one hole, John’s shot came up a little short of the green. Herb went over the green and took the cart to park it up by the green, just like the threesome had done numerous times. However, not knowing golf etiquette, Herb drove the cart directly across the green, a major etiquette mistake. The course they were playing was semiprivate, and by the time Dan saw the problem, a handful of regulars were already shouting at Herb.

  Dan tried to calm the situation and took the blame for not explaining the etiquette to Herb. Herb tried to walk, but the regulars continued to holler. As Dan recalled, it was a racial issue. “It was obvious that the only thing they didn’t like more than Herb driving across the green was the color of Herb’s skin,” he told me.

  To Herb’s credit, he apologized and said nothing else. Dan finally got the regulars to calm down, turn around, and walk away, and as he did, he turned around to find John walking toward them with his wedge raised as though he was going to swing it and hit them. He yelled at the regulars, “Ya’ll better turn around and get outta here!”

  Dan had to grab John, take the club out of his hand, and steer him back toward their hole. As Dan remembered with a good laugh: “That was Johnny! Five foot nothing, 95 pounds, full of cancer, and he’s going to take a pitching wedge to a few good old boys, backing up the six-foot-seven basketball star and the six-foot-eight coach!”

  In May 2008 John told Steve Wetzel that he wanted to take his mom, dad, and Lexie on a last vacation together. Steve took the ball and ran with it and put together a fundraiser called Walk For A Champion. Students from about fourteen high schools showed up. The family was amazed by how many people participated, and enough money was raised for John to take the family on a western Caribbean cruise.

  By the end of June 2008, John’s message was reaching far and wide. “A guy called from Sacramento, California. . . . Brian Karavlan and his wife named their son Jaxson Challis Karavlan. We were so honored that someone would do this,” said Scott.

  In the mail the Challis family received a package with an American flag and a letter of authenticity from a Navy pilot who flew a mission over Afghanistan; he knew about John and wanted to do something for him. Not long after that, John received a package from Emeril Lagasse, with an autographed cookbook and a chef’s apron.

  In June, John and Scott were in the pool when the phone rang. There was a man from New Jersey on the line, and he asked if this was the home of John Challis, the one who was on TV during the hockey game. He asked if he could speak to John. John took the phone. Scott recalled, “I could hear him say, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you, sir, just pray for me,’ and he hung up. I asked [John] what all that was about, and he said the guy just wanted to hear [his] voice. He then said that the guy’s father was sick and that John had given him inspiration. John said he never thought he was helping people in that way.”

  It seemed that everyone in town knew about John and who he was. John would go to the store or walk through the parking lot, and people he had never met would yell, “John, hang in there!” or “We’re praying for you.” He would go to a restaurant and someone there would pick up the tab. Different bars and restaurants sent home special soups or dishes that people knew John liked: lobster bisque on Wednesdays from Kelly’s, or potato soup from Tinitique. French onion soup or escargot from the Wooden Angel, or Ray Salamone from Conway Pizza, sending home wings and chicken soup.

  Everyone reached out. Friends of the family Linda Keener and her mom, Joan Pail, were so special to John. According to Scott, they always made sure John had his sweets. “Either desserts or fresh strawberries twice a week for two years,” he said.

  Joe Signore asked what he could bring, and John told him he loved crab. Joe brought John two Alaskan king crab legs twice a week for almost six months.

  Everyone wanted to help and give. Even something as simple as talking to John meant a lot. As Scott recalled, John had a circle of very good friends, not only in his peer group, but among adults as well. One adult friend, Karen Roman, talked about John’s incredible wisdom: “John was the reason I quit smoking. We were at a Freedom High School girls’ basketball game. I had just come in from smoking a cigarette, and John came up to me, and his words were powerful. He looked me straight in the eye and asked me, ‘Karen, do you want to end up like me? Keep smoking.’ My response was ‘You’re right, John. I shouldn’t smoke. I’m going to quit, and you are my inspiration to do so.’ I haven’t picked up a cigarette since.”

  She continued, “I would always visit John. Toward the end John seemed so weak, yet he still kept his humor. During one of my visits Scott was trying to get me to try this food that looked disgusting. John was in the living room half-asleep when he belted out, ‘Don’t eat that! It’s snails.’ My daughter Cassie and I laughed the whole way home!”

  Her last conversation with John will stay with her forever. Her family was leaving for Ocean City, but before they left she made sure to stop by the Challises’ one last time. John was on the couch, so frail, in and out of sleep. Gina attempted to wake him. When she told him Karen was there, his eyes opened wide and he gave her a huge smile. “I knew that was the last time I would talk to him,” Karen recalled. “His last words to me [were] ‘I love you,’ and then he closed his eyes. I cried the entire ride home.”

  While on vacation, Karen called Scott every day for an update. She prayed for a miracle, that nothing would happen while she was so far away. She hadn’t been home ten minutes when she got the call: John had passed away. “The selfish part of me was angry,” said Karen. “How could this happen to such a good kid? John was so full of wisdom beyond his years. The mother i
n me knew John was at peace. No more pain. He was home, flashing the grin to all the angels in heaven. I’ve kept his voice mails on my phone. When I’m feeling sorry for myself, I listen to his message. It puts life back into perspective.”

  Two final instances show the Challis effect at work in two different parts of the United States. First, in 2010 eight-year-old Coby Johnson from Berwick, Maine, saw on ESPN that John had written on his baseball cap, “Courage + Believe = Life.” His mother contacted the Courage for Life Foundation to purchase T-shirts and some other items from the Foundation’s web page, and she said that her son put John’s message on everything he owned. She sent the Foundation a picture of her son’s bedroom wall with John’s message on it.

  Additionally, in 2008 John received a letter from an inmate from the Department of Corrections in Colorado, telling him that John had changed his life and that now he wanted to turn his life around.

  PART 6

  THE FIGHT OF HIS LIFE: JOHN’S POST-DIAGNOSIS BATTLE AGAINST CANCER

  Before John was discharged after his first week of chemo, the nurses told Gina and Scott to make everything at home as sterile as possible. Gina’s mother and sisters came to the house and scrubbed every room from top to bottom. Nurses came to the house over the next two weeks to check on John, and he was very cooperative.

  It was a tough few weeks after John came home. Lexie, only twelve at the time, had no idea what was happening as far as John’s care or his prognosis went. While Gina was trying to come to grips with everything, Scott wanted to take a family picture immediately. It did not turn out as well as he had hoped. “I just wanted something in case he died, because we didn’t have an up-to-date family picture, and I wanted a picture while he still had his hair.”

  Meanwhile, John, wanting to keep as much normalcy in his life as possible, wanted to go to the Fourth of July parade in Midland, Pennsylvania. “He didn’t want to miss it because that was something that the family always did together,” Gina said.

  Football camp started in the middle of August, but John was unable to attend. While John still went to practice, hanging out with the team and riding around with Vince Sinovic in his golf cart, he was receiving treatment in the hospital when the team picture was being taken. He was so surprised when Coach Wilson told him to go to the picture studio and get his photo taken; the studio would Photoshop him into the team picture.

  Scott told me how the Freedom Bulldogs football team, the coaches, and the parents always made John feel like he was part of the team. One particular road game provided a great memory. “We were playing an away game at Sto-Rox High School right outside of Pittsburgh,” Scott recalled. “John wanted to travel with the team, and we didn’t have a problem with it if the team didn’t. One of the team’s football mothers came up to my wife and me and said, ‘Wait ’til you see your son.’ We didn’t know what to expect. At the pregame show the Freedom team was coming out of the locker room, and here comes John out of the locker room with his brand-new letterman jacket. Most players have to wait until the banquet in January until they get their jacket, but since everyone knew John’s days were numbered, they gave it to him that night. He was so proud.”

  John was trying to live his life just like his friends were, and that included making use of his new driver’s license. But because he was on so many different medications, Scott and Gina were scared to let him on the road. They ended up driving him to practice every day; then he would ride around the practice field with Vince Sinovic on the golf cart all afternoon. Then one afternoon in late August, John came up with an idea he thought would make things easier on everybody.

  Scott recalled, “John came home after practice one afternoon and said, ‘Since you won’t let me drive, will you let me buy a golf cart to get around in?’ He said he would pay for it. Gina and I said, ‘You pay for it, you can do it—but if you get picked up for riding it on the streets, then that is on you.’ About two weeks later, John found one in the local newspaper’s classified ad section, so we went to look at it. He liked it, and the guy let him take it for a ride. John didn’t have any hair, and the guy recognized him from the newspaper story that Bill Allmann had written in the Beaver County Times. The guy asked me if that was him. I told him yes. He ended up giving John a nice deal on the golf cart and then told me to take an electric wheelchair he had in case we would ever need it for John. So I took that too.”

  When the family got back from John’s Make-A-Wish (Alaskan cruise) trip in early September 2006, he had Scott take him to school. He told him that he would have to talk to Dan Lentz, the high school assistant principal, about setting up plans to do home schooling and to attend classes when he felt up to it. The reason John did this was that he was insistent about graduating with his class in June 2008. That day, from the outside looking in, John may have outwardly appeared down, but he certainly wasn’t lacking confidence that he was going to beat cancer.

  Scott told me that although going to school was uppermost in John’s mind, it certainly wasn’t in his or Gina’s. “I didn’t care if John ever went back to school, because my wife and I knew the prognosis. We thought he had one or two months left at this time. Just the way the doctors said to us that if John was going to take his Make-A-Wish trip he better do it now.”

  John, though, was insistent; he and Scott went into Dan Lentz’s office, where John again told him, not mincing his words, “I’m going to graduate with my class.”

  Scott got emotional when recalling that, telling me, “There were a handful of things that choked me up about John, and that was one of them. He promised Mr. Lentz he would graduate with his class, and I will say this about John, his word was his bond.”

  At the end of October, John received his second chemoembolization treatment. This treatment normally lasted an hour, and then John would be wheeled to UPMC Montefiore and sent to the Liver Cancer Center. Scott explained to me the logistics of him getting from one hospital to the other. Children’s Hospital, Presbyterian, and Montefiore were connected; John would travel many miles on hospital gurneys from one hospital to the other and then back again. He had to lie still for eight hours and keep his legs straight, but this type of treatment was so much easier on his body. There was no hair loss, and he was up and moving much faster than he was when he underwent conventional chemo. Gina would stay with him during every treatment. Having his favorite nurses, Maggie and Theresa, nearby always made him feel at ease.

  Treatment for John and the family became routine, and by the third treatment, he had it down pat. His day would start out at four-thirty in the morning because he had to be at UPMC Presbyterian in Pittsburgh by six o’clock to check in. He would then report to the fifth-floor short stay area, where they would prep him for his treatment. It was important that he be given a lot of fluids through IV before his treatment, so he would have to lie down for four hours until he had received the correct amount.

  Scott remembered how John became such a pro when it came to what went into his body that he knew all the medications and when he was supposed to have them. Once while he was waiting to go for treatment, the nurses started to wheel him down, and John said, “I didn’t get my Zofran pill.” The nurse said he had, but John insisted he didn’t get it, and he would not go anywhere until he got it. John made the nurse look in the garbage for the blister pack, and when she couldn’t find it, she still insisted he’d had it.

  “Gina and I were getting a little embarrassed about it, but we both knew how John was, and he would know if he had it or not,” Scott said. After they had spent almost thirty minutes looking through garbage cans, the pharmacy called up and said that the pill they were looking for had never made it to the room. “The apology the nurse gave to John afterward was comical—she felt so bad,” recalled Scott.

  John age 4 in the Challis family living room.

  John age 3 in the Challis family front yard.

  John age 3 with his Grandfather “Pappy” Tiberio at Kennywood Park.

  John age 17 during Hunt o
f a Lifetime Trip in Baker City, OR.

  John age 18 at the board during his senior project presentation.

  John age 17 senior picture.

  John on his golf cart after completing his wood shop project.

  John age 17 at a Fourth of July picnic at his grandad’s house.

  John age 17 at the final football game.

  John getting “The Hit.” This is the only known photo of John’s famous hit, taken on a cell phone by Dan O’Leary.

  John speaking at Walk for a Champion Fundraising event.

  John and his Junior Prom date, Jackie Knopp.

  John getting his nightly back rub from Gina.

  John with deer at taxidermist George Sullivan’s.

  John with Uncle Tom Challis.

  John with Larry the Cable Guy backstage before show at Consol.

  Family Picture when John received the Jeff Kemerer Award.

  John with Mario Lemieux, John Smoltz, Ben Roethlisberger, and Pierre Larouche at 2008 Penguins playoff game.