Ronnie Never Gives Up!

By Ronnie Raper

In March of 1995 my father-in-law, Doyle Williams, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I remember my own father, Cotton Raper, saying “You and Denise (my wife) better spend all the time you can with him because old Doyle won’t be around long”. Doyle was only 51 years old. Throughout his illness I tried to comfort Doyle and my wife as best I could. Dad kept saying “poor old Doyle….just no hope”. A hospice bed was soon staged in the living room and that is where Doyle drew his last breath on March 20, 1995.

Ironically, just 12 years later Cotton began losing a severe amount of weight. At first he was some what pleased because he had always been over-weight, but he soon discovered that this weight loss was a tell tale sign of something much worse.

We didn’t give it a lot of thought at first because Cotton was a hospital veteran. He was constantly under the care of specialist due to a rare disease called Wagner’s that disabled him in 1976. It wasn’t strange to us to hear that he was sick or going to have a battery of tests performed on any given day.

Cotton had already survived two open heart surgeries in his lifetime and we felt convinced that he would fight through whatever this was.

I remember my cell-phone ringing as I got into my car a week later. It was my mom and she said “Son, I made your Daddy go to the Emergency Room. They ran some x-rays and found a mass on his pancreas. They’re not giving him any hope”. I just couldn’t believe it!! I heard those same words twelve years ago.

I noticed that Dad’s eyes were yellow by the time I arrived. Where had I seen that before? You want to believe that if you see a train bearing down on you that you can get off the tracks after the horn blows, but we couldn’t change it. Oh, how that fact ripped at my heart. I noticed there was something else different about Dad’s eyes other than the jaundice. He realized that his body, just like a past boyfriend or girlfriend, was breaking up with him. He didn’t want to die, but life was breaking up with him. On December 7, 2007 at 3:00 am, Dad drew his last breath on the hospice bed that had been staged in his living room.

Two months later, I decided that there had to be something done to help get people off the tracks of pancreatic cancer. My research led me to The Hirshberg Foundation. I was filled with hope to realize there was indeed a way to fight back and that Cotton’s fight didn’t end on that hospice bed.

Those people that knew my Dad called him Cotton, due to his blonde hair. Cotton raised a family of singers and musicians, so we decided to plan a music festival in his memory. Cotton Fest was held on September 29, 2007 on our 17 acre private property in Etowah, Tennessee. We had professional and semi-professional bands playing mainly Bluegrass, Contemporary Bluegrass, and Southern Gospel Music. The event generated $700.00 in donations for the Foundation. We plan to do much better this year by getting an earlier start. There were a lot of growing pains associated with getting our property festival-ready.  We are looking forward to The 2nd Annual Cotton-Fest which will be held on September 27, 2008. Our family and friends are working aggressively to secure enough sponsors in order to donate a 100% of the proceeds to The Hirshberg Foundation.

I am eternally grateful that there exists a foundation of hope for all those like Doyle and Cotton. This was my way of healing…knowing that their life and their fight will continue.