Dear Family & Friends,

This July 30th will mark my 21st year participating in SWIM ACROSS AMERICA honoring the namesake of our team, my late cousin, Clare Reynolds Joyce, who died of cancer, far too young, at the age of just 41.  Each year I have tried to bring you a different story (and reason) to support me and TEAM CLARE in the race to find a cure; and this year is no different.

            What is different this year is that I am going to tell you the story of a young lady & friend who is right now, as you read this, in the fight for her life.  You might not know her personally, but you know exactly who she is.  Lemme explain:

   Many of us have “that family” in our lives.  You meet a member of “this family” and before you know it, maybe by happenstance, luck, or fate, the whole family becomes your friends.  It starts with one or two, but quickly grows into an all-encompassing family relationship.  You start by getting invited to play backyard football or grabbing a drink and that morphs into family milestone events, bachelor parties, weddings, etc.  Soon you start to wonder who you are actually closest to in the family.

I have one of these families, The Walkers:  Jim, Chris, Mike, Jon, Jeff, Stephen, and Brian.   Yup, 7 boys and not a sister in sight.  There are few families I know who are closer, inclusive, fun, more different from each other (though they all look alike!), and most importantly, supportive of one another more than the Walker family.  If you know one, you know them all and if you love one, you love them all!

So, when there’s an issue, it’s everyone’s issue; family and friends alike!  Stephen Walker, the 6th son/brother is married to Heather and it’s Heather who is fighting the good fight.

            You don’t marry into the Walker Family by being a shrinking violet and Heather Walker is anything but.  She is beautiful, fun, brings big energy to anything & everything she does, is the Mom to two beautiful little girls (Sammy, 13 & Taylor, 10) and works in PR for The Boston Celtics (don’t hold it against her……or maybe that makes you love her more!)  In July of 2021 she was on her way home from the Press Conference introducing the new Celtics head coach and got into a car accident on Storrow Drive because she couldn’t see to her right.  She got sick that night and went to the ER the next day.  The CT scan showed a tumor and surgery was the next day at Brigham.  The diagnosis was stage 4 glioblastoma.  BRAIN CANCER.

Take a moment, think about it………   When they say “your life can change in an instant”……………

            This was followed up by 6 weeks of, Monday thru Friday, chemo and radiation at Brigham, a clinical trial and more chemo at Dana Farber, and an MRI Scan every 6 weeks to check for growth or progression.  As Stephen Walker says, “these days/scans are real scary and hard for what they might find and say”.

After hearing what Heather is going through you might think she spends her time seeing doctors and lying in bed, but nothing could be further from the truth.  This is Heather and this is what she has been doing:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoUJyecUKwk.

And if you were ever wondering if your donations are actually making a difference, on June 9th 2022, Memorial Sloan Kettering announced that a clinical trial, run out of the Swim Across America Lab, had CURED RECTAL CANCER in 4 participants.  YOU did this!

This year I swim on TEAM CLARE, but swim for Heather Walker. Each year those of us who swim do our little part so that those who are literally in the “fight of their lives”, like Heather Walker, can fight the good fight.  I hope you will consider supporting me and TEAM CLARE again this year so we can take one step closer to finally defeating this insidious disease and never again having Mom’s and Dad’s needing to have those very tough conversations with their kids about “why Mommy is sick”.

Donations can be made on-line with the link below

Or made by check (made out to SWIM ACROSS AMERICA) and sent to me at:

Mark J. McCooey

56 North Street

Harrison, NY 10528

            I hope you all have a wonderful summer and thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Mark