When Bobby DeWees’s grandfather died of leukemia in March 2022, he wanted to honor him. So, he decided to test his limits. He’d train to race Hawaii’s Lavaman Triathlon in under three hours—and he’d raise $67,000 for leukemia research along the way.
The challenge? While DeWees was an accomplished athlete, he’d never broken the three-hour mark before. And he’d never tried to raise anywhere near that kind of money. He needed help. So, he reached out to an organization that soon became his strength: The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS).
The Nonprofit That Changed the Game
Eighty years ago, the kind of cancer that killed DeWees’s grandfather would have been incurable. Most leukemia patients died within three months of diagnosis. But the elder DeWees actually lived two decades with the disease—a miracle compared to what many other patients faced before LLS came into the picture.
When LLS was founded back in 1944, leukemia was still a terminal diagnosis. Like most patients, the founders’ teenage son, Robert, died shortly after diagnosis. Frustrated by the absence of treatment options, Robert’s…
