Summary: “Don’t be afraid to fail because you learn more in your failures than you ever will in your successes.” – Adam Katz The Bucket List Life Podcast Episode #43 - Doreen Katz MCF Founder Adam Katz Determination is our next guests ‘middle name’. In this, episode #43 of The Bucket List Life Podcast with Kenyon Salo, we meet Adam Katz. He is the founder and director of The Doreen Katz Memorial Cancer Foundation, the first foundation that focuses on the children of cancer patients and providing for their education and therapy. He is also the author of the book ‘Jeremy’s Journey' and was a Russian Linguist and Signals Analyst in the United States Navy. His story is powerful, impactful and heart wrenching. Highlights of their podcast conversation: 6:20 “Jeremy’s Journey” was a book born from Adam’s experience with a young man he met while working with the Junior Racquetball Team in Colorado. We learn how Jeremy breaks his C5 vertebrae in a climbing accident and becomes a quadriplegic. Adam decides to play a season of tournaments, document every game; self publish this information into a book and present it to Jeremy and his family. Even though Jeremy could no longer play in the tournaments he could still feel like he was part of that season. 12:00 Adam shares how he met Doreen while they were freshmen in college in Rhode Island. How he fell in love with her the moment he met her, how she kicked his butt in racquetball and how she laughed at him when he admitted he loved her at dinner that first night. 15:45 We learn of Adam’s “crazy journey” to Colorado. He moved from Boston to San Jose, CA to Colorado Springs to Charlotte N.C. How at every new city he calls Doreen and invites her to come. She refuses. He joins the Navy and keeps in contact with the love of his life. 20:30 Adam shares with us the heart wrenching story of how he is stationed in Japan and misses the woman he loves. They make a date to meet in Memphis for a racquetball tournament. He calls Doreen on her birthday right before he is to ship out and the phone is disconnected. His story takes us through the agony of not knowing what was going on to how he learns Doreen has breast cancer and is dying. He finds her, and when he finds out that her only regret is they were never married he drops to his knee and proposes. The agony of having to depart from her right after they are married, why he is not able to share this experience with anyone, and why he is unable to be with Doreen when she passes away or attend her funeral. 27:40 Adam admits that at his lowest emotional point he contemplates deserting from the Navy, looks for a source for fake ID’s while in port and why he stopped. We also learn why it was impossible for him to share the most devastating experience of his life with anyone. 30:30 We find out how the’ Avon Walk for Breast Cancer’ finally gives him an outlet to finally talk about Doreen and how he ends up sharing his story as one of the speakers for the opening ceremonies. “The burden was gone…and at that very moment I saw the foundation I was going to start right then and there” 36:35 Adam tells us more about “The Doreen Katz Memorial Foundation”. “We focus on children that have a parent that is battling any sort of cancer.” During those times the families’ income is reduced and finances often have to be redirected to important cancer treatments and can affect the children’s education. The foundation helps in these situations. It also helps provide therapy. It gives children information on what the parent is going through, what is being done for them and it also “gives them a voice outside of the home.” 42:50 How does the foundation raise money? Adam says “I beg a lot, write a lot of grants, we do events….mostly I beg.” 45:15 Adam’s shares his vision for the foundation in the next 5 years – the foundation exists only in Colorado and it needs to expand. “That’s the ultimate goal, to become a national foundation.”
