WHO NEEDS HOCKEY TO BE A HERO?
Forced to retire in his prime because his body could take no more, scoring ace Cam Neely turned his back on hockey. He had an even more important mission -- to save lives -- and his fans,
SHAWN McCARTHY reports from Boston, were only too eager to help
Steven and Erin McDonnell were leaving the country. He had quit his job and they had sold their home near Boston to head north to Nova Scotia. The plan was to go into the seafood business.
Then came the dreadful news: Isabel, their 11-month-old daughter, had leukemia.
The couple feared for their baby's life. "We thought that was the end of the story," Mr. McDonnell recalls.
It wasn't. Within weeks, Isabel's leukemia began to move into remission. But she would require a year of chemotherapy, spending up to six months of it in hospital. Meanwhile, her parents faced uncertain medical bills and had nowhere to stay.
They thought about renting an apartment, but in the overheated Boston market, landlords were demanding first and last months' rent and security deposits; on top of that, you needed to pay a broker just to find a suitable place.
Then came something Mr. McDonnell describes as a godsend: admission to the Neely House, where, for just $10 a night, they had a room in a renovated wing of the Tufts-New England Medical Center while their daughter underwent treatment at the adjacent Floating Hospital for Children.
Today, blond-haired, blue-eyed Isabel is 5, and quite literally a poster child for the residence, which has offered shelter to more than 2,000 cancer patients and their families since it opened in 1997. It was home to the McDonnells for 11 months as Isabel underwent the treatment that drove her illness into total remission. If she remains cancer-free until next September, doctors will consider her "cured."
While Isabel was in hospital, one parent would stay in the room with her and the other would sleep at the Neely House. Later, when she was being treated as an outpatient, the whole family lived in the self-contained, bed-and-breakfast-type unit, one of 16 with access to a common living room and kitchen.
"You don't realize how amazing the place is until you have experienced it," Mr. McDonnell says. "You can't even imagine how appreciative you are to have just the little things there for you, like laundry and not having to commute when you are going through something like that.''
The man responsible for all this knows just how Isabel's father feels. In fact, Cam Neely has been through "something like that" twice. He has lost both of his parents to cancer.
On Monday night, before an expected crowd of 17,000 adoring fans at the FleetCenter, the Boston Bruins will honour their former scoring ace by retiring his number.
A four-time all-star who epitomized the term "power forward," Mr. Neely was a forceful checker who also led his team in goals for seven seasons and remains its all-time leading goal scorer in the playoffs. Seven years after a degenerative hip injury ended his playing career prematurely, he will watch as his No. 8 is raised to the rafters alongside the numbers of such other Bruins greats as Eddie Shore, Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Johnny Bucyk and Mr. Neely's long-time teammate, Ray Bourque.
This week, a quieter but no less emotional ceremony was held at Tufts-New England Medical Center to pay tribute to his hockey prowess and to some equally impressive off-ice accomplishments.
In the past 10 years, the Cam Neely Foundation has raised $10-million (U.S.) to provide more humane care for cancer patients and their families immersed in a medical bureaucracy that tends to forget patients are people. Like the McDonnell family, many of those who gathered on Tuesday night have been touched directly by the foundation: as guests at the Neely House; as patients who are receiving swifter access to experimental treatments through the hospital's Neely Center for Clinical Cancer Research, or as doctors who will be able to offer patients more comfort and better care as a result of foundation-sponsored renos.
Dr. Thomas O'Donnell, chief executive officer of Tufts-New England Medical Center, presented Mr. Neely with a set of hospital scrubs, emblazoned with his name, the Bruins insignia and the soon-to-be-retired number. "You have taken the same qualities that made you a great hockey player," he said, "and you directed that energy towards the battle against cancer.''
Mr. Neely credits his mother, Marlene, and father, Michael, with instilling those qualities in him as a youngster: a fierce desire to achieve and the dedication and perseverance needed to translate desire into reality. And when cancer claimed them both, he turned their inspiration and his own enormous drive to another goal: providing more humane care for cancer patients and their families.
In practical terms, his hockey greatness made it all possible. A huge favourite with fans for his aggressive style and willingness to play hurt, he has traded on that popularity and his continued celebrity status to raise money with golf tournaments, comedy shows, Monte Carlo nights and direct appeals.
But in an interview in his sparsely furnished office a few blocks from the sprawling Boston medical complex, he quickly makes it clear that, while the foundation bears his name, it's a family endeavour. Brother Scott has been the executive director since it was established 10 years ago, sisters Shaun and Christine are consulted on major decisions, and their work is an ongoing tribute to their parents.
When Marlene died of colon cancer at 47 in 1987, Cam Neely was 22 and in his second season with the Bruins. (Born in Comox, B.C., he had begun his pro career with the Vancouver Canucks in 1983.) His father contracted brain cancer around the same time, passing away in November, 1993, at the age of 56. He died while visiting Boston, where his son was back in the lineup after being plagued by injuries for two seasons.
Mr. Neely missed three games and then returned to resume a torrid scoring steak that saw him collect 50 goals in 44 games, a pace bettered only by Wayne Gretzky. That year, he was awarded the NHL's Bill Masterton Trophy for "perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey."
But the experience of watching his parents die left an indelible impression. Mr. Neely not only had to fit his visits to Vancouver into a gruelling hockey schedule but felt the doctors had treated him and his siblings as little more than bystanders. "I really felt that the family was kind of left out," he recalls.
By then he was already active on Boston's charity scene. A regular, though unheralded, visitor to the cancer wards at the Floating Hospital for Children, he had met parents who had stayed at the Ronald McDonald House, the Golden Arches-backed facility for out-of-town parents with children in hospital.
With their sisters' support, he and Scott decided to start a foundation to help people cope with the often dehumanizing grind of cancer treatment. "Our goal was to be completely patient-focused and family-focused," he says.
Scott Neely, whose own hockey career was marred by injury when he was still in junior, had dabbled in business, organizing golf tournaments first in Vancouver and then in Boston. He offered to run the foundation while his brother concentrated on hockey (he had yet to retire) and other business interests.
In consultation with Dr. O'Donnell and Dr. David Schenkein, then head of hematology/oncology at NEMC, they agreed to build a hotel-like facility in the hospital itself where outpatients could stay or their families, if they had been admitted.
The brothers raised $2-million (all figures U.S.) for construction and have since provided the home with a $3.5-million endowment to pay operating costs.
Neely House manager Patricia Rowe said the residence is not only convenient and comfortable for patients and families, it is also "a healing place.''
A former intensive-care nurse and the mother of five grown children, Ms. Rowe has her own apartment on-site and provides round-the-clock supervision and more counselling than she admits to.
"My nurse's ear is listening all the time," she said as she conducted a tour of the facilities.
She contends that the presence of the Neely House actually helps patients in their battle with the cancer. "It can be very healing for the patient just to have the family nearby and looked after, knowing, [for example] that a wife won't have to schlep around an unfamiliar city.''
One woman, she said, was called to her frantic husband's beside at 2:30 a.m., navigating the hospital corridors still clad in her nightgown and robe.
One of her more delicate tasks is stick-handling the bookings when someone is scheduled to arrive but the family currently in the room has had a loved one take a sudden turn for the worse and needs to stay. At such times, she has to rely on all her skills as a critical-care nurse who has had long experience dealing with anxious and grieving family members.
By mid-2000, with the facility completed and endowed, the Neelys had to decide whether to stay in charity business.
"We figured we had momentum and it would be a shame to lose that," Scott Neely explains. When they asked for another challenge, the hospital pitched a renovation of its clinical-research centre, a task the Neelys took on determined to improve the comfort level of patients undergoing experimental treatment and reduce the time needed to have such treatments approved.
The resulting Neely Center for Clinical Cancer Research is the smallest of the foundation's projects, costing only $250,000. But by consolidating the clinical-trial team and bringing in state-of-the-art data equipment, NEMC won the right to work with the National Cancer Institute in an innovative program to reduce waiting times for experimental treatments.
Dr. Jack Erban, the current head of hematology/oncology, says the program is already providing patients with quicker access to innovative drugs without jeopardizing safety. One leukemia patient received an experimental treatment within 24 hours of having it prescribed, rather than waiting the usual six weeks.
The research facility, Dr. Erban says, is a classic example of the Neely approach. "They want concrete results -- if they take on a project, they want the donors to see a result within a year. And they are patients' advocates. They are always looking at the aspect of how does this help people negotiate the medical process better?"
An even more ambitious project is the $2-million rebuilding of the hospital's stem-cell and bone-marrow collection and transplantation centre. Cam Neely said the foundation agreed to finance it after seeing the cramped and dismal space where donors and recipients were forced to spend hours waiting. "It was a depressing, archaic kind of space where people sat in the waiting room with no windows and could see people in beds undergoing procedures."
This week, the brothers toured the new space, due to be finished in mid-February, quickly putting to rest any doubts that they just hand over cheques. The newly roughed-in waiting area did not meet with their approval. As Dr. Erban explained the benefits of the new facility to the guest, Cam and Scott began discussing whether the waiting room wall, which abutted a supervisor's office, couldn't be moved to give patients more space.
"When you look at the waiting room, it's a little smaller than I had pictured," Scott Neely told Dr. Erban. "You don't want people crammed in here."
"What about the families?" his brother asked. "I'm worried about where the family members will wait."
They were assured their concerns will be taken up with the construction supervisor.
With the transplant centre nearing completion, the foundation has launched a new project and, for the first time, the Neelys are focusing on pediatrics.
When they launched the foundation 10 years ago, they approached cancer care thinking about patients' parents. Since then, both have become parents themselves and changed their thinking.
The opportunity arose when the foundation participated in a CIBC World Markets charity event in which trading commissions are donated to children's charities.
The Neelys asked Dr. Larry Wolfe, medical director of the Floating Hospital for Children, for a "wish list," and wound up agreeing to finance the $2-million renovation of the pediatric ward. Rooms will be brightened up and space created for daybed to be used by parents wanting to spend the night with a frightened child.
For Cam Neely, returning to the FleetCenter surrounded by family and friends on Monday night will be a bittersweet moment.
Forced to retire at 31, he stayed away from the game he had loved so much. But lately, as his contemporaries have retired as well, he has come back. Last year, he joined fellow former Bruins Barry Pedersen and Rick Middleton as broadcast commentators.
What sustained him in the difficult years, he says, was the work of foundation and the birth of his two children. So the coincidental timing of the ceremony honouring his hockey career and the formal announcement of the Floating Hospital project couldn't be more fitting.
Shawn McCarthy is The Globe and Mail's
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