As Prostate Cancer Survivor, Colangelo on Mission to Get Men Tested
By Mike Saucier
Jerry Colangelo made a decision to have prostate cancer surgery on New Year’s Eve in 2004 so he could start 2005 with a clean slate.
Now it’s 13 years later and one of the many things he does with his time – a cause dear to his heart – is serve as honorary chairman of a golf tournament to help make men aware that they need to get their prostates checked.
The 16th Annual Jerry Colangelo Sports Legends Golf Classic tees off at the Arizona Biltmore on Sunday, April 9, with a celebrity and player dinner party, auction and comedy show. NFL Hall of Fame wide receiver Andre Reed will be among the many former football players at the party. That night of fun is followed by a golf tournament on Monday, April 10 — a five-man scramble, each team captained by a Hall of Famer or sports celebrity.
Proceeds from this event benefit “POP”, Prostate On-Site Project, founded by Gene Felker, a Arizona State University coach and executive director of the Sun Angel Foundation and well-known Phoenix figure, who passed away four years ago. His daughter, Marla Zimmerman, has continued the mission of early detection of prostate cancer. POP has mobile medical screening units that travel throughout Arizona offering free or low-cost prostate cancer screenings. This year in Arizona, more than 4,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer. Tragically, 600 will die. Many of these deaths could be prevented – simply by detecting the disease early.
In an interview with Frontdoors, Colangelo said many former professional and collegiate athletes who live in the Valley went through what he did: a prostate cancer diagnosis that changed the direction of their lives.
So the tournament is a way they all come together to try to tell others that it can be prevented via testing.
“It’s a matter of coming together and raising money through this golf tournament and creating awareness so that young people can be educated about prevention and about being tested,” Colangelo said. “Since this is one type of cancer that can be beat, we need to just continue to be out there speaking about what can be done and what to do. That’s the whole purpose of the golf tournament. Golf is a vehicle to bring people together and tell the story.”
The draw for many of the athletes is just being around others who have been on the field.
“There’s a camaraderie among people who’ve been involved in sports and so whenever there’s a get-together,” Colangelo said. “I experience this all the time with the Basketball Hall of Fame, for reunions of teams like our Diamondbacks World Series championship team, the prostate cancer tournament, and on and on. When you hear people talk about what they miss most, it’s camaraderie. So it’s a great opportunity to see guys have a great time, have a laugh, enjoy each other’s company and everyone sharing the same issue.”
Colangelo was diagnosed with prostate cancer in late 2004 and is an advocate for POP and their mission to improve the quality of life for men and their families through awareness and the early detection of prostate cancer.
As a prostate cancer survivor, the former Suns and Diamondbacks owner is happy to see that the tournament helps raise awareness for potential victims of the disease.
“When I was diagnosed with cancer, I didn’t feel sorry for myself,” Colangelo said. “I wasn’t like, ‘why me.’ My attitude was, ‘well, why not me? I’m no different than anyone else.’”
He said, “So when you look at it through that kind of lens and then you’re blessed and fortunate enough to come out of a cancer situation and overcome it, you’re more than inclined to try and give back and help those and educate people as best you can. There’s a motivation involved.”
Prostate cancer, unlike other types, can be prevented, he said. “If people are educated, take care of themselves, get tested, they can catch it early enough where you have a great chance to beat it and survive,” he said. But men, by nature, “don’t want to deal with it, don’t want to talk about it until it’s too late sometimes.”
Prostate cancer does not always present symptoms that would lead men to believe they had a problem. “In some cases, yes, in most cases not,” Colangelo said. “And so it’s still a shocker when you go through the examination and then the diagnosis and then you’re told where you are. The first thing is some fear. The second thing is knowing that if it’s addressed immediately you’ve got a shot.”
He feels blessed that he was able to make it through. Colangelo chose to have his surgery on New Year’s Eve 2004 because he wanted to start 2005 “with a clean slate.”
“The year 2004 was a traumatic one in my life as it relates to a lot of major things that happened,” he said. “I sold the Suns. I stepped down from the Diamondbacks a few months later. I was fortunate enough to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in the fall. And then late in the year found out I had prostate cancer. I had some choices to make obviously. One of which was I wanted to have that surgery.”
The surgery was successful and marked a new beginning for him.
Today, he’s a self-described “busybody” and divides his time among several projects large and small. He spends a lot of time on the campus of Grand Canyon University, where the business school is named in his honor, helping in the classroom, with the school’s leadership and its basketball program.
He is a real estate partner in JDM Partners, which owns land in in Arizona and has projects spread throughout.
And, of course, he runs the Olympic basketball program, USA Basketball. He is an advisor to the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, and, on top of all that, he is chairman of the Basketball Hall of Fame in Massachusetts.
“I don’t dwell on one thing or another,” he said. “But there are some things close to my heart that I will always support and continue to support, such as Young Life, which is a Christian nondenominational organization for teenagers, junior high and high school kids and has been a ministry that’s been very close to our family for over 50 years. I’m serving on the board and very involved in that ministry and others.”
For event details: www.prostatecheckup.org
