Texas Big and Small

The bus tour continued on to Fort Worth this afternoon and to Cook Children’s Hospital, which was also one of the first LAF grantees way back when.

Several legislators and reporters and the great Cathy Bonner, who is the mother of Prop 15, are onboard with us. Between meetings and interviews, we had sandwiches for lunch and we watched the movie, Spinal Tap, which I’ve never seen.

Cathy Bonner is a talented and tireless Texas businesswoman who, after losing her good friend, Texas Governor Ann Richards, to cancer last year, was inspired to get the Texas legislature to do something about it.

The result was, eventually, Proposition 15.

Our next stop gave us the opportunity to visit with people that can’t yet vote for Prop 15, but would certainly benefit from it.

At Cook Children’s, I visited three kids in their hospital rooms and then a group of kids in a play room. One little girl, Ciara, was drawing and coloring bikes for me. I also visited with Sadie. Her mom and I attended the same high school. They were all transplant patients.

Later I made my way to the main foyer at the hospital to discuss Prop 15 with the crowd. There I had the honor of sharing the stage at with a young woman named Melanie. Melanie is 14 and is being treated at Cook Children’s with surgery and chemotherapy for a malignant bone tumor in her foot. She gave me a special Cook Children’s Prop 15 cycling jersey. I joked that maybe that was a sign I should put away the running shoes and get back on my bike. Well, not until after the NYC Marathon.

The foyer of Cook Children’s was filled with kids being treated for cancer. They represent the best reason for us to vote for Prop 15.

They reminded me of another young girl, Kelly Davidson, who was also treated at Cook Children’s. I met Kelly many years ago at an autograph signing at a sandwich shop. She was first in line, so she had clearly been waiting for a while. She was also, clearly, a cancer patient. As I told the crowd today, she won me over right away. We lost her to cancer several years ago. She deserved a chance to be 18 and a high school grad. She deserved a life that included college graduation at 22 and maybe a wedding and kids and grand kids years later. All those kids do. We should invest in them and their future. In comparison, considering what is lost, $3 billion over 10 years is marginal.

Our appointments today reinforced what I already knew. This is the right time and the right place to fully invest in cancer research. We have the research institutes, the doctors, the cancer groups, the overwhelming need. While that would be enough, it is also true that, as a Texan, I would be so proud to see my state take the lead in saving lives from our own backyard to the farthest corners.

So, tomorrow the Prop 15 tour continues. We’ll be in Houston and will check in from there…