Pancreatic Cancer Symposium � Los Angeles
PanCAN � November 3, 2006
Willye B. White
Inspirational Speaker
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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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