Hi Everyone,

I was hoping you could help me with something. As many of you know, my dad, Randy, was diagnosed with Cancer in 2024. Our world flipped upside down in a matter of seconds. When my dad was diagnosed with Neuroendocrine Tumors (NETs), and could no longer work, and my mom could no longer work to help care for him. If you have ever had a loved one with Cancer, you know the bills do not stop. This is where the Purple Plunge stepped in. 

The Purple Plunge is a local charity that helps local families during those tough times. The Purple Plunge helped my parents by making a donation to cover their bills. This took some pressure off my parents during this time so they could focus on my dad to fight for his life. Ultimately, the cancer was too much, and my dad passed away peacefully on May 24th, 2024. 

There are so many stories I could share about my dad, but it would take over the entire website. I still might, we will see where this goes. He was always one of the biggest inspirations in my life. I always wanted to be a great person like he was. I always hated it when he was at school while I was there, both in middle school and high school. He would always go out of his way to embarrass me, from kissing a pig in front of the whole school in middle school to telling embarrassing stories about me in front of my friends. But as I got older and really started to think about it, I was extremely lucky that he did that. He never missed a football, baseball, or basketball game (which I was absolutely terrible at; I still don't know how I made the team). He went to every parent-teacher conference and told all my teachers that if I ever acted up, stick me in the closet. No teacher ever did that, but every teacher let me know that. He was on the school board at my middle school, and then, when that was over, he moved to the high school board. He just wanted to make a difference and I still think to this day he is the reason I got into education. 

When I started my coaching career, he made sure to make every bowling match and every baseball game. I was very fortunate in my first year as the head coach for bowling at Stevenson to have a very good team. We won just about everything we were in. He was the first person I called to talk about what happened. We ended up winning the IHSA State Championship that year. After day 1, he was the first person I talked to, and during the lunch break on day 2, he was the first person I talked to. He helped me clear my head and make sure I was thinking clearly and kept me grounded. Because of that I truly think that helped me make the right decisions when I needed to. During baseball games, he would sit on the third base line and heckle me while I called out the hitting signs and the defensive alignment. God, I miss those days. 

I know this was long and if you made it through it all, I am sure you could tell I just wrote this from the heart and it kind of goes everywhere. I am terrible at writing, but I wanted to get some things that really stuck out in my mind. Like I said earlier I could easily talk about a million stories, like I said he kissed a pig at school if the entire school read a certain number of books, he shoot me with an airsoft gun from about 5 feet the first day I got home, he chased me with a shovel during the winter when I threw an ice snowball at himm told me and my friends to play in traffic (we all laughed no one was ever in traffic). The list goes on and on. I miss him every day. 

Thank you, Purple Plunge, for helping my parents during the hardest time of our lives, and I hope we can help you, even if it is just a little. If you made it this far, if you have the means to dontate that would be great, if you do not that is ok just take a moment and think about a loved one and cherish that moment.