WILLYE WHITE'S SPEECH BEFORE THE PANCREATIC CANCER SYMPOSIUM

 

                                     
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Pancreatic Cancer Symposium � Los Angeles
PanCAN � November 3, 2006

Willye B. White
Inspirational Speaker

(page 1)

Good afternoon, I am deeply honored to have been asked to be your speaker here today.  I would like to present to you a brief history of my fantastic life.
 
My philosophy on life is very simple; always have respect for God, self and others.  I was born and reared in the unchartered territory of the Mississippi Delta where it was very hard to succeed.  Thanks to my grandparents, I succeeded because they gave me a hero.  A hero to believe in and introduced me to a God to worship as a child, and today my motto remains the same.
 
I say this each day, �If it is to be, it is up to me and I believe in me.�  Self-belief is the key to success.  Therefore, if I did not succeed there was no one I could blame because I strongly believed that my future was in my hands.  I had dreams, I had wishes and all that was needed was a plan.  For a dream without a plan is only a wish.
 
My greatest gift was my athletic ability.  Athletics was my flight to freedom. Freedom from: illiteracy, ignorance, prejudices, and the unchartered territory of the apartheid Mississippi Delta.  

Competing in the Olympics is one moment in a lifetime experience.  I was blessed to have had  five of those moments.  I have been in athletics for over 50 years, traveling all over the world.  I have witnessed the good, the bad, and the ugliness of the world.
 
I chose sport as a career because sport is one avenue that never ceases striving for excellence.  
Athletics exposed me to all the elements of life: pain, joy, failure, disappointment, and success.  I learned early in life that winning and losing were a part of life.  That realization enabled me to  become a balanced person in mind, body, and spirit, because life is about balance.
 
I also realized that to become a winner, I had to compete and believe in myself.  Had I not had the opportunity to be involved in sport, my life would have been totally different.  Different in a  negative way; through athletics I was introduced to the world, the fullness of life, and a higher  being providing me with a better insight of myself.
 
I was reintroduced to my grandparents� vision of always recognizing the spiritual part of my life  because one cannot function well without this component.  Athletics taught me how to take pride  in my accomplishments.  It taught me sportsmanship on how to win and how to lose.  I  developed physically, mentally, spiritually, and academically.  I realized that I had to be spiritually strong, mentally tough, and physically capable to perform at the highest level.
 
I spent endless hours, days, months and years practicing and preparing for competition and realizing that life was not without rivalry, tension, anxiety and pain.  I found that success walked  side by side with sacrifices.  I learned to turn my pain to power and my scares to success.  Sport prepared me for the greatest challenge of all... life.  I realized that I had to be totally committed, dedicated and focused with a positive attitude if I wanted to become successful and a winner.
 
Beautiful people, life is about attitude and choices.  Attitude is everything.  My attitude became my attitude.  I am what I am because of my participation in sport.  I am who I am because of my  Olympic experiences.
 
I discovered my flight to freedom at the age of 10, running varsity track for the high school in Greenwood, Mississippi.  At the age of 12 playing varsity basketball, and at the age of 16, I  represented my country for the first time on the 1956 Olympic team, winning my first of two  Olympic medals in track and field.
 
I am the first woman from Mississippi to compete in the Olympic Games and medal.  I was the first American woman to medal in the long jump in the Olympics.  I was the first American to  have competed in five consecutive Olympic Games in Track and Field:
 
1956  Melbourne, Australia
1960  Rome, Italy
1964  Tokyo, Japan
1968  Mexico City, Mexico
1972 Munich, Germany
 
I was also a member and medalist on four Pan American Games teams.  I was the first American to win the world�s highest sportsmanship award, the United Nations Educational Scientific and  Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Pierre de Coubertin International Fair Play Trophy.
 
In 1999, I was chosen by Sports Illustrated for Women as one of the 100 greatest athletes of the century.  In 2002, I was chosen by Ebony Magazine as one of the 10 Greatest Black Female  Athletes.  In 2004, I was selected by the Chicago Sun Times as one of the 100 Most Powerful  Women (tied for 3rd) in the top 10 sports.  I competed in Track and Field for 27 beautiful years;  competing in 150 nations.
 
Through my experiences in athletics, I learned that success was not measured by winning a gold medal, but rather through the satisfaction of knowing that I gave my very best.  Throughout my life, I have been confronted with many challenges.  I met those challenges through self-belief, a positive attitude, discipline, commitment, and a strong belief in God.  I gained so much from sport for life.  I have taken the values that I derived from sport and molded them into my personality enabling me to be the person that I am today.  I am truly blessed and thankful for such a wonderful gift.
 
During my life, I have had many obstacles and struggles; my struggles in sport and life provided me with a strong beginning for life�s highway.  Ladies and Gentlemen, today is the first day of the rest of my life.  For seven months I have been on a Pancreatic Cancer journey.  I am now two months cancer free.
 
I commend the medical world, the doctors and medical practitioners for working so hard to try and control this cancer monster.  I stand before you today a living witness, living proof, that you are making a difference.  Ten or twenty years ago I would have been a mortality statistic.  I thank you, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network for your role in working together for a cure.
 
Now, I will share with you my spiritual pancreatic cancer journey that began on March 6, 2005 when I was diagnosed.  I went to my doctor to request a complete work-up because I was moving to my new home located on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.  Diamondhead, Mississippi is  located 12 miles from where Katrina came to shore.  It was just after Katrina hit the coast, most of the hospitals had been destroyed and most of the doctors had relocated.
 
I wanted to be certain that I did not have any serious medical problems.  My physician suggested  and conducted a stomach ultrasound.  The test results introduced me to pancreatic cancer.  

Earlier, I had been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes.  I had no symptoms other than stomach  reactions from the diabetic medication I had been taking for one month.  I have always had a sensitive stomach with acid reflux and experienced a reaction from most medications.
 
After the test results introduced me to pancreatic cancer, my physician requested additional tests and those tests confirmed that I indeed had pancreatic cancer. The confirmation devastated my doctor because she felt that she should have been able to detect the medical irregularity.  I assured my physician that without her requesting the ultrasound and additional testing we would not have found the cancer until it had spread to other systems within my body.
 
When I received the news, I was very calm.  Although I knew the seriousness of pancreatic cancer, I cannot explain to you why I was so calm.  I knew I had been attacked by a deadly enemy.  Instead of fear, anger and disappointment, I began speaking to my God.  I said, �Well Father, it has always been just the two of us, you and me together, we can make it.  I cannot travel this journey alone.�  Thus far during this illness, I have never asked, �Why me?�  I have had a fantastic life.  Why not me?
 
My athletic endeavors enabled me to travel this journey with a clear understanding of what I was facing.  I knew it was a battle for my life.  I knew this was not a practice run.  This was the real competition.  As in sport, you dream, you have wishes, but without a plan, you have nothing.  I knew that if I had any chance of winning this battle, I had to get a plan.  For a dream without a plan is only a wish. This is where my athletic experiences came to play a part.  In sport you
compete as a team and I knew that if I was going to survive; it had to be a team effort of the best physicians that could be assembled.  I knew that I could not travel this journey alone.  I telephoned Dr. Steve Rose, the Director of Oncology at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern Hospital.
 
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