Soon after the start of this year’s major league baseball season, Joy O’Connell saw proof that she has made a difference. It came in the person of Philadelphia Phillies first baseman John Kruk, who pounded out three hits, including a double, in his first game.
Several months earlier, Kruk had been diagnosed with testicular cancer. He may not realize it, but O’Connell, 49, of the McHenry County village of Prairie Grove, is a big part of the reason he has a good prognosis and can continue his professional baseball career. There’s a chance that without O’Connell, Kruk and most of the nearly 7,000 men who each year come down with testicular cancer would die.
That was the case 24 years ago, when O’Connell lost her first husband, Brian Piccolo of the Chicago Bears, to a form of testicular cancer called embryonal cell carcinoma. Today, thanks in large part to research funded by the Brian Piccolo Cancer Research Foundation, which was founded by O’Connell and friends, most men with testicular cancer will live.
“Twenty-five years ago, 95 percent of the men who got embryonal cell carcinoma died. Today, 95 percent of them are cured. Joy and her people have played a big part in that turnaround,” said Mortimer Chute, senior vice president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Center in New York.
Piccolo, who signed with the Bears as a free agent running back in 1965, received most of his cancer treatments at Sloan-Kettering. Sloan-Kettering researchers funded by Piccolo Foundation grants eventually developed an effective treatment for testicular cancer.
“It’s ironic and wonderful that almost as a direct result of the money Joy helped raise for us here, which is where Brian passed on, we were able to develop a successful treatment that is now the standard in this country and around much of the world,” Chute said.
“This little idea (of a foundation) has really grown,” said O’Connell, who is vice chairwoman of the organization. “We have a great group of volunteers. We don’t have a soul who gets paid, and when I think of all the money we’ve raised and all that we’ve done, it’s a great feeling.”
Piccolo was part of a Bears backfield that featured Hall-of-Famer Gale Sayers. But during the 1969 season, Piccolo began losing weight and developed a nagging cough. Tests revealed that he had testicular cancer and that cancerous cells had moved into his chest. On June 16, 1970, at the age of 26, Piccolo died.
The Piccolo Foundation came into being shortly after, when a group of his friends and teammates suggested a golf outing to raise money in his name for cancer research. The golf outings and other activities have generated more than $3 million for cancer research, more than $2 million of which went toward the cure for testicular cancer.
Now that testicular cancer has been tamed, O’Connell and the Piccolo Foundation have turned their attention to funding breast cancer research at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago. O’Connell also devotes much of her time and a portion of the foundation’s money to Clearbrook Center for the Developmentally Disabled in Rolling Meadows, where O’Connell’s 44-year-old sister, Carol, who has cerebral palsy, is a resident. Piccolo Foundation funds also go to Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago for bone marrow transplant research.
About 30 people serve on the foundation’s board of directors, and various organizations donate staff time and services. Since the foundation’s inception, O’Connell has been the glue that has held it together.
“Without Joy and support from the Bears, the foundation would have failed a long time ago,” said Piccolo Foundation chairman Billy deCicco, owner of Chicago Set Shop, a graphics and design firm in Chicago. DeCicco was a friend of Brian Piccolo’s and one of the organizers of the first golf outing.
“Joy is a wonderful spokesperson. She’s modest, unassuming, but she is persuasive and has a way of getting things done.”
Fellow Piccolo Foundation board member Ronnie Bull agreed. Bull was a Bears running back during the 1960s and another of the organizers of that first golf outing. He has been a member of the board of directors ever since.
“If Joy ever says she has had enough, the foundation would probably dry up pretty quickly,” Bull said. “A lot of us are there because of her. She’s quiet, and modest, but when she grabs on to something, watch out. She has bulldog determination. She doesn’t let go. After all these years, I think her determination to do things to combat cancer is as strong as ever.”
Determined though she may be, O’Connell said she never thought the foundation would stay together this long.
“It was just friends who decided to have a golf outing to raise money for cancer research,” she said.
O’Connell has lived for 18 years in Prairie Grove, a sprawling, largely wooded village between Crystal Lake and McHenry. She and her husband of 21 years, Rich O’Connell, moved there from the south Chicago suburbs. They married after a mutual friend with an apparent flair for matchmaking brought them together. Rich owns several ready-mix concrete companies, including Crystal Lake and Woodstock Ready-mix.
O’Connell is the mother of five children-three daughters from her first marriage and two sons from her current marriage. When Brian died, her daughters ranged in age from 18 months to 4 years.
“I was 26 and had three babies, and all of a sudden I had become a spokesman on cancer,” O’Connell said. “Everything just mushroomed. The next thing I knew, they were making a movie.” “Brian’s Song” is a tear-jerker about Piccolo’s illness and friendship with Sayers.
“Those were busy years,” she said. “I had good friends who helped me a lot.”
One of those good friends was Ed McCaskey of the Chicago Bears, who O’Connell said took her and her daughters under his wing and helped guide them through the rocky months during his illness and after Brian’s death. He has remained a friend and, at age 75, is now honorary chairman of the Piccolo Foundation.
During the late 1960s, McCaskey was working as a liaison between Bears owner George Halas and the players, and Brian Piccolo was a player representative.
“In many ways, Brian was like a son to me and Virginia,” McCaskey said, speaking of his wife. “After he got so sick, I’d be in New York as much as six weeks at a time with Joy. She showed a lot of courage and determination. She still has that determination.”
About three years ago, the foundation decided to establish an endowment at Sloan-Kettering for Brian Piccolo research fellowships and send the bulk of its money to fund breast cancer research at Rush-Presbyterian in Chicago.
“The move from New York to Chicago was Joy’s idea,” McCaskey said. “She hung in there like a bear till she got it.”
O’Connell’s other great cause is Clearbrook Center. She became involved about seven years ago, after her sister moved there because of health problems related to her cerebral palsy. Guerin Fischer, Clearbrook’s president, said Joy and Rich O’Connell are among the center’s most generous supporters.
At Fischer’s suggestion, Joy joined Clearbrook’s board of directors shortly after her sister moved there. And O’Connell and her husband have helped in other ways.
Fischer said Rich O’Connell has donated concrete to the center for construction work, and both O’Connells have gone out of their way to help individual residents. One way is by giving them transportation.
Many of the center residents need to use wheelchair lift vans, and because the O’Connells own one to accommodate Joy’s sister, they’ve become unofficial Clearbrook drivers, Fischer said.
“If someone here needs a ride, Joy and Rich are happy to use their own van to help,” Fischer said. “And some of our clients don’t have family. Joy and Rich have brought home quite a few people with Carol for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. They are both very caring.”
“Caring” is a word Jeannie Morris of Chicago immediately uses to describe Joy O’Connell. The two have been friends for 30 years, meeting through Morris’ then-husband, former Bears wide receiver and current TV sports reporter Johnny Morris.
“There are two projects that Joy gives countless hours to: Clearbrook Center and the Piccolo Foundation,” Morris said. “She has made some personal sacrifices for those causes, especially for the Piccolo Foundation. I don’t think people realize how much of a sacrifice Joy has made. It hasn’t been easy for her to be reminded of the pain she went through with Brian. And Rich is a special person, too. He has always supported Joy’s work. He’s a quiet man with tremendous strength of character.”
O’Connell divides most of her time between foundation and Clearbrook Center meetings (“Just say lots and lots of meetings,” she said.) and making phone calls from her home to sponsors and supporters. These past few weeks have been especially busy in the O’Connell household, as Joy helps put the finishing touches on plans for this year’s annual Brian Piccolo Golf Outing, the foundation’s largest fundraiser. It will be held Monday at Indian Lakes Resort in Bloomingdale.
Today, Father’s Day, the foundation will hold its 6th annual Brian’s Run at the Chacellory Fitness Center in Itasca, a 5K race in which families can participate. The race was the idea of O’Connell’s three daughters, Lori, 28; Traci, 27; and Kristi, 25. With about 2,000 participants last year, the race already is one of the Chicago area’s largest.
“It amazes me how many committees my mother is on,” said Traci Piccolo Dolby of Chicago. “The foundation and Clearbrook each have regular monthly board meetings, and they both have committee meetings on top of those. And with the golf outing and the run coming up, she has even more than usual to do. She definitely puts in some long hours.”
Asked about it all, Rich O’Connell smiles and describes his wife as “hard-working and dedicated.”
“My stepfather likes to stay in the background,” Dolby said. “But he has supported the foundation and my mother in everything. I think a lot of people would have had a hard time handling all this, and that’s a tribute to him.”
For Joy O’Connell, that support has been important. And so has the memory of a man who, several years ago, addressed the foundation. He was a survivor of testicular cancer who wanted to thank the board for its work.
“It was a strange feeling, looking at him and thinking that he had survived this terrible disease because of something we did,” O’Connell said. “That moved me. I’ll never forget that feeling. It keeps me going.”
