IT STARTED with a basal cell carcinoma on his face, and it progressed. That’s enough.
There’s more to tell, but then this would be a story about cancer, and I won’t give it the space.
I’d rather talk about The Voodoo Vinnie Open, and the man himself, and how people who maybe don’t even know Vince Caronna saw a way to let the good human beings inside themselves come out and play golf.
It’s Saturday, at Capitol City Golf Club, and we have 36 players and a raft of Friends of Vinnie helping out. That’s the nut of it … that’s The Voodoo Vinnie Open. I didn’t say the first annual, because I’m well trained, but there will be a second annual, next year.
A golf tournament was such a natural as a way to help Vince and his family that it was all there was, for me. I wasn’t prepared for the people, and how very cool and kind they can be.
I wasn’t prepared for the smiley-face icon in the email response from one golf course professional, reminding me that real fund-raisers come armed with a 501(c) number (just an FYI, he wrote), which said to me, “You’re really too small for us … but good luck on your little event.”
It was Vince who said, “Let it go, man.”
He went to LSU, and he’s a huge Bayou Bengals fan, which is a good thing because their color is purple, and he’s a Husky fan, too, at least when he’s around me. He humors me, at no time more than when we play golf.
Vin has had medical challenges in the recent past, even before this one. I don’t know if he believes in the healing powers of a round of golf in the long shadows of late afternoon, but it was such a round, with me, after his 2012 heart attack, that maybe got him back into life a little bit and should have taught me something about the relative importance of life and family and friends versus a triple bogey on No. 13.
Vince is playing in The Voodoo Vinnie Open tomorrow.
He had his first treatment this week, with an experimental medicine that has the nice side effect of not making him puke his guts out. I won’t say more, because then the story would be about cancer. I just don’t have the space.
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