Scott Hamilton: The Power of Purpose, Perseverance, and Joy

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Carl Line. She's a queen and talking on the song.
You know, she's getting really not afraid to fail its
episode soul.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Just let it flow, No one can do we quiet,
cary Line, it's time for Caroline. I am so thrilled
to be here with the legends. Oh Scott Hamilton, Oh
my goodness, you are a legend.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Well you're the founder of Runaway June, so you know,
you know it'speaking.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Just gush to each their own, right, No, but I
mean you're like a true living legend.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
That just means that I'm old, and uh, the further
away you get from something, the richer it gets. You know,
if you ever heard a story told a thousand times
and each time it gets a little bit bigger, a
little bit broader, a little bit. I feel like that sometimes.
But a lot of really cool things, like beyond anything
I ever would have dreamed to happen, happened. And a

(01:09):
lot of nightmares that I never would want to experience happened.
So it's just kind of one of those roller coaster
things where and it's you know, it's like, well, I, uh, cancer,
that's terrible, our brain tumors that was terrible. Child is
that was true. What I've learned in my elder years

(01:31):
is I can look back and I can understand that
every single thing bad that happened to me was laying
foundation for something phenomenal. Are going to cry it's phenomenal. No,
But it's like, so people look at me as a
disgusting optimist. Like you, it's like you feel like you
can make you can feel good about anything. It's like, well, yeah,

(01:52):
it's like, yeah, I was in hospitals for four years
as a child.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Because when you're five, nobody knew what was wrong with you.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Right, Yeah, all those years and then two thousand and four.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Did anyone ever figure out what was wrong with Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:05):
What? Oh this is wild? So I stopped growing and
developing from four to eight pretty much, or five to nine,
somewhere in that range, you know. Yeah, but hospital hospital,
and back then they weren't like children's hospitals now where
they're all the really cool colors and they've got toys
and wagons and television and things like that. It's a
bed in a chair in the corner.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
So it's so scary.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Well it's just yeah, it's sterile, and it's like, yeah,
it's it's and so my mom would sleep in the
chair like all the time. That's that's I have nothing
but love, and you love.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Your mom anything. She was the greatest person.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
I dedicated most of my life to honoring her in
every way I possibly can. But you know, so all
those years, I don't grow, I don't develop, I don't
do it. You know, it's bad. And my parents were
school teachers, so you know, they didn't have the I mean,
it's healthcare, you know. So it's expensive and it's frightening,
and there's no answers. And the first year, no high
bowling green, no answers, go to a bigger hospital Toledo.

(03:01):
A year, no answers, go to Ann Arbord Children's Hospital
of University of Michigan. Year, no answers, except you know,
they give you that you know, tracking the trajectory of
this illness. We feel like he has may have six
months to live, and so but you know, it's like,
why is it always six months?

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Six months?

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Six months? Yeah, So it's like my mom was just
really sweet, shows thank you so much. We're leaving. And
we went to the biggest hospital, children's hospital, the biggest doctors,
and that was Boston Children's and It was there that
I had every symptom of a disease called Schwakman diamond syndrome.
And my doctor was doctor Schwakman.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
The guy who diagnosed the syndrome. Yeah, so he found.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
My first celebrity I ever met, right, because he had
the disease named after him that he named Right. But
he couldn't prove that I had it. I had every symptom,
but he couldn't prove that I had it. What do
you have to have to prove that you have it?
I guess it was a sillyact thing. It was some
sort of there was a marker about it. We're talking

(04:00):
the mid sixties, right, yeah, I mean it was basically
blood letting and you know whatever. Back then, it was
just there. It was people just making up as they
went along. They they didn't really have really.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
The resources and the information they.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Have now now. I mean they have like all this
whole body scanning and all these blood markers and all
these like high tech instruments to pet scans and all
these things. They didn't have any of that back then.
There's just kind of best guess. Yeah, yeah, so he
just sent us home. He couldn't, He said, I can't
treat something I can't diagnose, So go home and live
in normal life and see what happens.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
And he told you to start ice skating.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
No, our family doctor who lived across the street three
doors down.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Go home, see what happens. After they say you have
six months to live. That's a big tall order. I mean,
so you know your parents are just like, are you
just going to die?

Speaker 1 (04:50):
No, they didn't know. I mean they were I could
tell they were nervous, but you know, it's they did
everything they could, so you.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Never that was your diagnosis. But then there was no
treatment for it.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
No, they only kept me on a supplement that it
tasted like it awful, Like you know if it's now
when you have children's medicines, you can go to like
a pharmacy and they'll have like flavor of the month
is like grape or bubble gum or something. The only
flavor that supplement came in was chalk. Yeah. It was nasty,
it was really and it was very medicinal kind of

(05:22):
like it had to after taste. So I refused. I
started like basically telling my mom that I was gonna
drink it in the bathroom in case I gag and
I just flush it down the toilet. You know, I
just would not drink it. And so everybody was like, oh,
probably know, it's very dramatic. This is the only thing
keeping you alive. And it's like, uh, really, I feel fine.
I may not be growing and I made, you know,

(05:44):
have a lot of other issues, but.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
I'm not taking that shop.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
I'm not doing it. And so we came up with
a compromise. Our family physician again across the street three
doors down, came over and said, okay, okay, I have
I have a solution to this. So they put a
tube but my nose, down my esophagus and they would
feed me that supplement through the tube, so I never
had to taste it again. And when I wasn't using
the tube, I would tape it to the side of

(06:07):
my face and put it over my ear. And then
that's how I live my life because I did that.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
How did that affect you as an adolescent growing up
with friends and peer pressure mentally and all.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
I still like almost nine, so you know, they knew
I was different. But you know, our neighborhood was all
kids my age, and so that was in the time
where just get home before dark. So I'd go out
and play and I do my thing. And I was
always the shortest, the weakest, the sickest, you know. Kind
of I knew I was different than everybody else in
my class. But so I started skating, and you know,

(06:41):
you know, you fall down, you know, you get tailbone bruises,
you get concussions, you get things like that, you know,
just growing up in a sport. And I played hockey
for a minute, and I played. I always joked that
I played three seasons, but I joked that I played
for two neck braces, you know, so the second neck
brace sort of like, okay, we're done with Yeah, by
then I was twelve.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
But don't you say like skating was when you, like
you said you had so many things going on that
that was a level playing field for you.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Oh yeah, no, I realized. I went and I you know,
you hang onto the wall, you know you're in. And
by then the rink was pretty new, so the rental
skates weren't all broken down or anything. So I was
able to kind of like figure out that I could
let go of the wall and I could skate a
little bit, and then I would go back and forth
across and then pretty soon I could make it all
the way around the rink without touching the wall. And

(07:30):
then pretty soon I realized I could skate as well
as well kids. And then pretty soon I could skate
as well as the best athletes in my grade. And
I was like, oh, wow, this is this is what
self esteem tastes like.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Oh that was your first real taste of it.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
Oh yeah, I mean I just felt like I could
do something. I have an identity here I have and
so I just became a rink rat. And and all
those years, you know, I started getting better physically. They
attributed it to the cool damp air because I had
a little bit of a lung condition. And then I
started building muscle and started because I had a descended stomach,
like I was starving and I had no muscle like

(08:07):
in my legs. And then pretty soon my legs started
developing and the descended stomach and I started processing food
better and things just started happening. And it was funny
your body flowing, yes, yeah, But it wasn't until two
thousand and four, and this was post cancer, chemo surgery
all the other stuff that I became really weird symptomatic.

(08:29):
And they went in and they did a scan and
they found that I had a pituitary brain tumor and
they couldn't figure out how to treat it because they
didn't know exactly what it was. So they had to
go through and do a biopsy. And so they did
the biopsy, and they told me going in it goes.
You have to understand that a lot of really bad
things can happen if we don't. You know, it's we

(08:50):
seem to have found a safe corridor. And I was joking.
I was like, I don't using any of it anyway,
So have about it.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
How old were you when you found this brain tamer.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
I would have been forty.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
Forty six, Okay, so you covered from your childhood illness,
you went on to like have a huge skating career,
and you're at the height of your career.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
The tumor came first, not cancer.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yeah. What they found was when they did the biopsy,
they found that I was born with it.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
So you'd had that tumor your whole life.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, And what they found what the type of tumor
it is. It usually prevents growth and development early in
a child's life.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
So that's what it was. Yeah, So that chalk medicine.
Really did it help or anything?

Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah, I just you know, it's just a supplement.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
So the tumor that was there your whole.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Life stopped when I stopped, It stopped doing its mischief
when I started skating.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
Why was that?

Speaker 1 (09:40):
I don't know. It could have been when I crashed
Gary Ziggler's bike into a telephone pole and I went
head first, you know, and it could have like it
could have killed the tumor. Then. I have no idea.
It could have happened on the ice when one of
my towured three concussions early. It could have happened. Any
head injury like back then, could have done it. I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
But it was the head you would stop the tumor.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out where
how when Wow, And it just sort of was one
of those things where all the years I started I skated,
it didn't do anything. And then I when I had
my my wife and I had our first child, I
just decided that, you know, after twenty years of touring,
that maybe I wasn't getting any better, and I'd spend

(10:26):
five times the amount of training to get five percent
of the return of investment. So it's like, who am
I kidding? You know, It's like I can still skate
and I can do things, and that's fine. But after
twenty years of being on the road, I think it
I've earned the capacity and the opportunity to be a
dad and be home because you know, in the traditional,

(10:48):
you know, kind of nuclear family, the mom is that,
you know, the kind of the hands on nurturer and
everything else. And I figured, well, I could be around us.
You know, I could see his first steps, I could
hear his first words. I could be you know, and
and all those investments have really, you know, really paid
off from the long run, you know. Fast forward when

(11:12):
my son Aiden was his senior in high school, he said, Dad,
I need to talk to you about spring break. And
it's like, this is going to be rough. Does he
want to go to Sodom or Gomorrah? You know, I'm
not sure where, but it's going to be bad and
it's going to be like crazy, And I'm like okay,
and I'm always you know, sort of like I listened
before I respond, and then that's a and then I

(11:35):
I'll tell him here's here's why things aren't A good
idea and usually it's about a two hour discussion and
wear them out.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
But that's really good that you have the conversations and
you get to the root of the of the issue.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
And then this one didn't go as I thought. I go, so,
all right, so what's up? And he goes, I don't know.
Where do you want to go?

Speaker 2 (11:57):
You want to go with you?

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah? No?

Speaker 2 (12:01):
At eighteen years old? Yeah, oh your heart.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Oh my goodness. It's like one of the greatest things
ever as a dad to think that your kids at
that age want to hang out with you.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
So I said, you picked the place and we'll go.
So we went down to the Caribbean. We hung out
for like six days.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Just you two.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah. I had a blast. It was so fun.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
And you know, because you don't you never know how
it's going to turn out. When you're raising these kids.
You do your best.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah, you do your best. And again, I I try
to live with an open hand, not a clench fist.
And you know, I've learned that, you know. I My
dad was a rotc PhD. Professor of biology at Bowling
Green State University, the toughest professor's there. Nobody really survived
his class unless they wanted to be kid.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
I was a tough guy.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
He was very tough.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
He was tough on you.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
He was it was very structured, like everything had. He
was ROTC Lieutenant with a PhD. Like he got it
as young as you can get a PhD. And then
he spent his entire professional career at Bowling Green and
he was an expert in all earth science. Like he
was such a dedicated you know, in academia and everything else,
and so you know, so my dad, you know, had

(13:12):
just a different way about him. You know, it was
very this is how I want things to go. But
I ended up strapping knives to my feet and wearing spandex.
I was a skater, oh right, right, right, So you
would think my dad would want me to go into academia.
I want me to be strong in school, but they

(13:35):
pretty much allowed just you know, especially with the childhood
illness and everything else and finding skating. My mom became
like the involved in the skating club, was the test chairman,
did all the hospitality for the judges. My dad and
we had an ice show. He loved to build, so
he'd go build all the props for the ice shows.
And it became a family affair. So they modeled kind

(13:58):
of that open hand sort of let's see where this goes.
And in so many respects, you know, I've been that
way with my kids. It's like, let's see where this goes.
And with Aiden, he was really like totally into sports.
Like day one, he was you know, he got him
into a little soccer team, then a flag football team,
and then he got into middle school. He wanted to

(14:19):
play football, and then he had an injury to his thumb.
He was a really good receiver, didn't really get to
play that much. So he said, I was just going
to basketball, and he would sit out in the driveway
and he just shoot for hours and he'd love to
and so we went into basketball for a minute, and
then you know, that wasn't really satisfying to him, and
so then he went into soccer and he was a
highlight reel like every time. His foot skills were great,

(14:41):
and you know, he'd play and people would just you know,
it was really fun as a parent to sit there
and wait to go, oh, he's got the ball. It's
gonna be really fun. You know. He just meg people
and nim you know, he was just deaking everybody out
and he was just he was fun to watch, and
then sort of around, you know, he realized that when
you go into Brentwood Academy, you see all the banners
in the gym of all the state championships they won

(15:04):
and football, basketball, the track and field, soccer, nothing. So
he goes, this is what I'm up against, and so
he went he transferred over to father Ryan for a minute,
and he realized that really everyone he knew and everything

(15:25):
he really ever knew was that Brentwood Academy. So we
went back and then he decided he wasn't gonna really
play soccer anymore, and he started building up his body
because he wanted to be a fighter. His grandfather, my
wife's father was a Golden Gloves boxer, and so he
wanted to go into fighting. And it's like, okay, let's
see where this goes. You know. So he's now twenty

(15:47):
two years old and he all he does is eat,
sleep and train. Wow, in his first fight is next weekend?

Speaker 2 (15:55):
How are you feeling nervous?

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Apprehensive? But again he's prepared himself a fight. Yeah, he
wants to be in the UFC. Yeah, let's just say
I don't discipline him anymore i'd say so, not that
I ever really did, but I mean it was, you know,
I was always kind of the here's why guy, you know,
and just you know you set up well, here's where

(16:18):
I don't budge, you know. So there's things, you know,
it's like when we're not going to tolerate this, and
we're definitely not going to tolerate that, and we want
to be honest and part remember the family and everything else.
And his journey has been spectacular. I mean, he's changed
our family in such remarkable ways. And our faith journey
is he's he's ushered us into this new way of worshiping.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
And and your youngest he's my oldest, your oldest.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
My oldest birth child. We adopted two kids.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
That okay.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
So your life, though, is just such a testament for
people everywhere, because you have choices all along the way
that you could have made differently, Like you could have
been defeated from the beginning with your childhood illness.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
You could have been.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah, there were a lot of knucklehead moments throughout, really
bad ones.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Did you ever have a moment where you're like, this
is just not fair. Why did I get this hand?

Speaker 1 (17:18):
No? Never, No, I always. I always kind of it
was really interesting, you know. I was kind of like
a typical All the years high school, I trained away
from home six months a year, which was I was
the youngest one at this training center. Everybody else was
adults basically eighteen to twenty something, and I'm like fourteen
fifteen hanging out with all these older people.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
So immediately we're excellent at ice skating. Always once you
got the bug, and once you got it, like.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
You no, I like Okay. Regionally, I was pretty good sectionally.
So the way that the United States worked back then
and figure skating was there are nine regions in the country. Okay,
three region right, so you have three regions in the east,
three of the Midwest, and three on the West coast.

(18:05):
Those three regions you qualify for sectionals. Right, So there's
three sections, and each section sends three people to the nationals. Okay.
So I was pretty good regionally, Okay, better than average sexually,
absolute epic disaster Nationally sexually, I could get to the

(18:29):
Nationals and then I'd come in last.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
You're you're still great to be in the nationals.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
Well, if you're a girl and you make Nationals, you're amazing.
If you're a boy and you don't make nationals, you
probably should be doing something else, you know, kind of thing.
So I get to nationals and I just I didn't know,
like I had some natural ability and and I could
skate fast, and I could jump, but I didn't have
the discipline. I just because when they built the rank

(18:57):
and bowling green, they were just trying to get coaches
to come in. There's no oh, pedigree, there was no tradition,
there was no example. I started skating a year after
the rink was built, and then you just sort of
a kind of and then then you start taking from
different coaches, you know, different places. And then I ended
up six months a year in this training center in Illinois,

(19:19):
which was spectacular. I mean, Janet Lynn skated there, who
at the time was the most popular woman athlete in
the world. Deal, that's a big deal. And then Gordy
McKellen was there and he was kind of my hero
still is, but he was the men's national champion, so
it was a I mean, we had the women's national champion.

(19:39):
I was with really great skaters. There was a dance
team there that won a medal in the first ever
Olympic dance ice stands thing. They were bronze and they
were amazing and they were incredible. So I had example
of good skating around me. I just I didn't know
how to do it on my own. So I was
ninth out of nine my first national and then ninth

(20:00):
out of ten my second nationals, and then I beat
two guys my first year in juniors. So it was like,
I joke that it was like one of those things
where wait, Hamilton beat you. Really, what are you gonna
Are you gonna quit? What are you gonna do? I mean,
that's rough, you know. And then I went back to

(20:21):
Illinois my senior in high school. My mother had just
been diagnosed with cancer. She shared it in a very
cheerful discussion.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
And then how does she share?

Speaker 1 (20:30):
She goes everybody family meeting, and it's like, what's a
family meeting? And she goes, Okay, everybody, I just came
back from the doctor. And she was very upbeat and
very you know, very big smiles and everything else, and
she goes, I've just been diagnosed with the disease called cancer.
And back then you didn't even say it, right. It
was seventy five, the spring of seventy five and she

(20:51):
had a form of cancer where there really wasn't a
treatment for her, you know, so they threw everything they
could at her, and she knew it was going to
be a brutal fight. So when she shared that news,
she just said, look, you're you're going into your senior
year in high school, and we're going to get you
through one more season because we're basically bankrupt. We've gone

(21:15):
through everything to keep you in skating because it made
me well right, and it gave me identity, and it
did anything. They're very sacrificial and.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
So parents really they were amazing, amazing.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
So she said, we'll get you through one more year
and then next year, after you graduate high school, we're
both professors at the university and you'll get free tuition
we can afford free, but that you're done skating after
this year. And I said they would just you know what,
have fun, but make account. I said, okay, So I
went back to Illinois. My main coach had retired. A

(21:48):
new coach came in who scared me to death. So
I just decided it was probably better for me to
just submit, so I did, and he got me doing
things I've never been able to do.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
Before to submit. You might just do whatever he said.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
Do whatever he says, they out of trouble.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
Okay, So was this a turning point for you? Had
you been that way before?

Speaker 1 (22:05):
No, not really, but he scared me to death. So
I just decided to do You.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Kind of had a fire under you too, because you
knew this was your last year.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
Last year. What have I got to lose?

Speaker 2 (22:12):
Your mom just had I mean, you had a lot
on your plate at one time. Yeah, so we can
take a break moment.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
We get to Nationals And I just landed my first
triple two weeks before, and my coach put it in
the program. So I was like, oh, bucket list check,
I got a triple jump. I landed one piling and
so he put it early in the program. And my
mom was there and shed They had just removed her
left breast and the inside of her left arm, and uh,

(22:39):
the chemo had taken all her hair. So she was
wearing this wig and she just was sure her arm
was in a sling, she said, so people would know
not to bump into her. And she had a big
smile on her face, and you know, she was just
standing in the corner. I just I can see her
standing in the corner of the rink. And I went
out to the warm up for my long program and
my coach grabbed the back of my pants and pull

(23:00):
me off the ice. It's like what I said, don't
warm up your triple sow And I said why and
he goes cause we don't really don't want to know
if it's there or not.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
I go, okay, we don't want to know if it's
there not. What do you mean?

Speaker 1 (23:10):
I mean like that might be a day where I'm
not landing it. It's better not to You're just gonna
have surprise attack. See what happens. Well, yeah, so just
do doubles and we'll and if you feel like it,
put it.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
In the level. Okay, So don't even do it, okay. Maybe.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
So I went out, you know, did my warm up,
went out to skate and landed my first job. That
was nice, and then I went into triple sound. I
remember thinking, well, this last one ever, let's just see
what happens. And I threw it, I landed it, and
I ended up winning Junior Nationals. What I didn't know
was my mom was so like, she was just so

(23:44):
effervescent that whole week and It's like, Wow, what kind
of drugs are you want? This is really doesn't make
any sense to me. And she goes, when you're done,
we'll just sit down, we'll just you know, talk, And
I said, Gray, So I win. I'm junior national champion,
which is that means that you have credibility going into
the championship level. But I'm quitting and she's going to quit.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah, that was my last competition.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
And then my mom said, oh, by the way, on
the way here, this judge named Nancy Mees. She set
up a meeting with this couple in Chicago who is
very wealthy, doesn't have any children, love skating and would
want to keep you on the ice. So they're going
to sponsor you. And I said really, and he goes yeah.
I go what does that look like? And she said

(24:32):
the only string attached This was nineteen seventy six, right,
the only string attached is you have to move to
Denver and take from a coach who that year was
coaching Dorothy Hamill to and John Currige to Olympic gold medals.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
So I'm going to fund you and we're going to
get you the best coach.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Right. Yeah, So I won the lottery, So now I
go to Denver.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
Can I plus for a second, I don't want you
to lose the spot, but like, this is the things
in life that just overwhelmed me, because so many things
had gone wrong, so many things. You could have quitted anytime,
you were even going to quit, but not for the
wrong reasons. You're gonna quit for the right reasons.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
So many things were stacked against you from the beginning. Yeah,
and then the moment comes where you get your moment,
you land the triple, and then you get a break.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
But the problem was that, I mean, the really cool
thing was the trajectory of that year. She knew before
I even stepped on the ice to compete at that
competition that I was going to keep skating.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
But she just doesn't want to tell you, yeah, because
she don't wants you to get in your head about it. Right, Yeah,
and it probably it was probably you had nothing to
lose because this was your last skate, so you're like,
let me just go all out, right, But then you
realize you could do it right.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
And so I go the next year. I'm now training
in Denver, I with the best coach in the world.
I passed my gold figure test first try, which I
was terrible at figures, but he was a really good
coach at figures, so he got me through it really fast.
The problem was the trifecta.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
What is that?

Speaker 1 (26:19):
The trifecta. Yeah, I turned eighteen, I was fully sponsored,
and I was living in my own apartment for the
very first time. It's the trifecta.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
What happens when the trifecta happens?

Speaker 1 (26:37):
Reckless irresponsibility? Oh oh, you had like so knucklehead stuff. Okay, Yeah,
I didn't know how to handle any of it. So
I go to Nationals that year and I don't even
know how I made it to Nationals. I lacked focus.
I was just overwhelmed by the fact that I was
competing on the senior level that year was so unexpected
to me that it was just all was coming at

(26:58):
me at light speed, and all these things were happening,
and it was like expectation and and.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
I just pressure. Did you feel a lot of pressure
a little bit?

Speaker 1 (27:05):
Because now I'm sponsored, I've got Carlo Fossei teaching me
all these champion I got all this like momentum, right, Yeah,
And I was really successful at that Nationals at Killing
the Momentum House. Okay, I came in again. I just
I was just I just couldn't figure out how to

(27:27):
do it. And then so the way it always would
work would be I'd be skating away and then I'd
come home. And so my mom had taken a turn
for the worst. She was at that Nationals and watched
me fail miserably.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
And did you feel like did you did you when
that happened? Did you feel like what happened? How do
you feel because your mom?

Speaker 1 (27:50):
I felt embarrassed and I felt guilty. I felt stupid.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
It was like, you're doing it in front of so
many people, You're putting yourself out there in front of
so many people.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
It was rough. And that that Nationals were in Hartford, Connecticut,
which was kind of like a skating center. It was
just Boston, New York. That whole region is really big
in skating. So I was failing in front of a
very educated audience.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
And so but here's where things got really crazy. So
I go home, My brother and I went to my
mom's hospital room. We were there up till about three
thirty in the morning, and she wasn't conscious or anything.
She was just sleeping. And then we had my sister
and her husband were home and I was sleeping on

(28:30):
the couch in the family room, just because you know,
we had so many people around to look after us.
And I remember my brother in law waking me up
at eight thirty in the morning and all he said
is your mother is gone. And all I could think
to say is I know. And it felt really weird
to say that. I don't even know why I said that.
I remember it vividly. So we lived out in the
country and I just went out in the backyard and

(28:52):
I just started to walk. I'm just trying to figure
out how to do it without her, you know, like
she gave everything, and you know, you got a mom's heart,
you know, you know, it's like you want the best
for your kids. Oh my god, you would die for
your kids.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Right, die for Yeah, And she gave she she gave
everything she had.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
For you, everything and then some. Right. So I just
you know, I a friend of mine lost his mom
decided to self medicate. I didn't figure that honor her
very much, especially after everything she sacrificed. So I on
the walk, I decided that I was going to take
her with me. To the ice every time. Wow, And

(29:27):
I called Carlo and I said, faster your seatbelts. There's
a different kid coming back.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
So it just put a fire and you, like nothing
else before.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
I was like insatiable. I was just I couldn't. I
couldn't work hard enough because you.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
Had to do it for your mom. Now now you
weren't doing it for you because you didn't know. You couldn't.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
Like you said, you couldn't figure out, you couldn't get together.
But now you had such a motivation that nothing could
stop you.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
She was going to be my focus. So if I was,
you know, if I didn't really if I was running late,
it's uh be on time, all right?

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Being on times of HU, who deal to you?

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Now it's a big deal. And then it's like I
don't feel like doing a long program run through. It
was altitude in summer hot nowhere, no do the long
program run through. I drove my coach so crazy.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
Because you're working beyond.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
With ambition, right, he goes, I'm going to send you
to Canada for the summer to get your programs done,
to get So I went up to Canada and I
was I and everything just sort of fell into place.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
You couldn't be stopped because now you have your why.
Having your why is crucial. You talk about that a
lot too.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Having your why is without it, I don't know how
anybody gets anything.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
Done because you don't know why you're doing it. But
now you're doing it because you're going to honor your
mom because everything she gave you, all the beliefs she
had in you. You're like, I'm going to show you
how much this is worth it and how much I
love you.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
So that next year I was third in the nation,
eleventh in the world.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
So you flipped the switch big time.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
And then two years later I'm on the Olympic team
in Lake Placid. And then starting in October of nineteen
eighty to March of nineteen eighty four, I never lost
the competition, and I'm the last.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Place guy, and you had been the last place guy.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
I'm last place guy.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
But is it it's because because you literally are like
you're doing it for your mom. That is so powerful, Scott.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
It's wild and you know so it's kind of that hole.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
And did take the pressure off of you two.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
No, it was a lot of pressure because what happened
after Lake Placid. I thought if I came in eighth,
that'd be really good because I was eleventh, you know before,
and I came in fifth. So the standings in that
Olympics were Robin Cousins Great Britain first, Joan Hoffmann from Germany, second,
Charlie Tickner from the United States, third, David Santi from

(31:46):
the United States fourth, May fifth. So USA went three
four five. And then I woke up one morning that
spring and I realized Robin Cousins just signed with Holiday
and Ice in Europe, John Hoffmans just decided to leave
the sport going to medical school, and Charlie Tickner just
joined the Ice Capades. All I had to do was
wake up and I went a second in the world.

(32:08):
Like that's it. I go, what do I need to
do to be number one? So let's go back the
competition where I came in last in novice Nationals, my
first Nationals. The kid now I have to beat at
twelve years old was on the championship men's podium because
he was a genius at figures, which was my weakest event.
Oh wow, yeah, God's sense, you know, he has a
sense of humor. So I had to put my head

(32:29):
down and get to work, and so I did, and
it was just there was no stop in me. Then.
I just it's so weird that that happened because this
was like forty plus years ago. Do you how many
times somebody's gone undefeated between Olympics, winning Nationals, Worlds, Olympics

(32:50):
without losing for four years only? It hasn't happened since.
Even Nathan Chen had a noops, and he's phenomenou. I mean,
he's like phenomenal, and you think that was it's all.
It's all God, you know, yeah, I mean it's nothing
else explains it. I mean I just when I started
looking up, I just realized, I there's something more at

(33:15):
play here. And I don't know why or what or
who were where and what the long play is here,
but I've got to participate. So I just I just
worked hard, really worked hard.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Is that when your mindset started changing?

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Though?

Speaker 3 (33:29):
Because like I love your podcast that you talk about
because you talk about the important like how failure is
just information, Like I think that is so awesome, and
how like not to get like hung up in our
past failures. And you also talk about like nostalgia, not
getting like lost in nostalgia.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
That's my favorite it's our mantra's Nostalgia is expensive, it is.
It costs you everything, my parents, And here's an example
of that, right, a weird example. So the car that
we all learned how to drive in was you know,
a three hundred tree you know, back in the days,
and the stick shift was you know in here. So no,

(34:04):
this one wasn't a three in the tree. That was
my brother in law's car. This one was a stick
shift down here. And my parents, like they just said,
as cars, just like we're just gonna drive into the
ground and can't wait till we can't don't own it anymore.
It was a sixty five Mustang.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
That's like a legendary car, right, yeah, Like it.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
Cost them two thousand dollars to buy to get one
now is like seventy five K. And they couldn't wait
to get rid of it. So it's like nostalgia is expensive, right,
So so true. It's like the the you know marriage
that falls apart because one of them wants to go
back to their high school sweetheart. Well there's a reason
it didn't work out back then, but you've forgotten, right, yeah,

(34:45):
and now it costs you everything, right, So it's it's
so much about living in the past, and it's something
I struggled with until I came to faith. It was
something that I was just like, I was such a loser.
I was so bad and I didn't appreciate my mom
when she was alive. I you know, I loved her
and she knew that and everything.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
But but you're also a kid, an adolescent and a teenager.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
But I didn't give myself that slack, you know, because
there was there's you know, again, the trifecta was a
part of it, but it was also the fact that
you know, I wasn't grateful, you know, and and I
see it throughout and and.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Her death was at the turning point though, oh big
time grateful.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
That was the fork in the road. And well it
was that and it was just like, I'm not gonna
do that anymore. I'm not gonna do that.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
You're not going to go that road.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
And you know, I still was a knucklehead, you know,
I was still young. But on the skating side, things
just started really working out.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
So you weren't grateful, and then you saw all the gratitude.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
And the couple that stepped in as my sponsors, her
husband died the year after my mom died, and that
was rough. That was really rough. And uh so she
became like my mom, you know. So she left Chicago,
moved to Denver and we ended up living in the

(36:03):
same condo building for a while. And she was just
a phenomenal lady and and they you know, it wasn't
like she was a big skating fan and she decided
to sponsor skaters. She wanted to invest in people. And
it was never a condition, there was never a string attached. Ever. Wow,
she just wanted you to understand the investment, understand the

(36:26):
commitments so that you would pay it forward someday somehow,
and you would understand that these sacrifices and the extensions
of generosity were meant to be forward. Yeah. And so
there were people that she sponsored that didn't get it,
and she'd say, well, you're not a good investment, and

(36:47):
so she'd move on to somebody else.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
As a heart investment that she was looking for. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Well it was just yeah, it was a response gratitude. Yeah,
but you didn't I didn't never have to write her
a thank you note for everything, just.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
To appreciate what it is. So you can do that
for someone else not so you can be like, oh,
you're the greatest that ever was. It's so do you
can continue the ripple effects?

Speaker 1 (37:05):
And her life has had such phenomenal impact. Wow, incredible impact.
So you know this is all that. And then so
I get through the eighty four season. Then I turned
pro and I'm with the Ice Capades and the president
of Ice Coopades didn't want to sign me. He thought
I was a risk. Why well, I was sort of

(37:25):
spontaneous a lot, you know, and he just probably didn't
think that I was going to be reliable, you know, safe.
And a lot of Olympic athletes that join the shows,
they're now in a festive environment. Let's just say you're
going from training and relative of you know, isolation to
now being on a company with like seventy five people

(37:48):
on the road, thirty six of which are young females.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
So there's a lot that can happen, A lot that
can happen. I mean, I'm shocked a lot if a
lot doesn't happen.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Well, and then I you know, so I was able
to navigate that where I never missed a show, I
never missed a press call, and I proved myself and
I thought I was going to get a third year option,
but a new owner came in and said, I only
want women's stars, so let you go. So now I
was unemployed and then IMG came to me. My manager

(38:21):
was an executive at IMG, and he said, do you
want to help us start a tour? And I said,
let me check my calendar. So we started a show
called Stars and Ice. Yeah. Yeah, and that went. I
was year eleven and Stars on Ice where I couldn't
stand up straight anymore because my work life balance and
my social life was just really out of alignment with everything.

(38:44):
It was just the tail was wagging the dog. The tail.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
Okay, this is already after you won that Olympic.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
Oh, this is like fourteen years later.

Speaker 3 (38:50):
So this is just yeah, you're continuing. Well that's amazing
you could continue.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
Well, I thought if I skated two to four years,
I was fooling a lot of people. And now I'm
in year thirteen. Wow, I'm in pure Illinois and I
had a dominal pain like nobody's business and.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
So hard on your body.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Well yeah, it was, I mean, it was it was
who I was. I mean, I was a skater. I
was a professional skater. So that's what I was gonna do,
and I was gonna no matter what. That was my identity.
Everything else came second. And then I'm I'm diagnosed with
cancer in Puria. They didn't know what kind of cancer
it was. So I took I had a tour bus

(39:30):
for that March because oh, I couldn't even stand up straight,
and as bad as a skater when you can't stand.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Up steah, yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
So I took my bus to Cleveland. I had a
biopsy the next morning, and then the morning after that
they diagnosed me to stage three cancer. And the tour
was in Dayton, and they were wondering what was going on,
and then they were doing Dayton and then they were
taking their bus is up to They were supposed to

(40:01):
fly from Dayton to Rochester, New York, because it was
a lot of the smaller markets in March, and so
instead they decided to take the tour bus and come
through Cleveland to see me on the way up to Rochester.
And uh, it was a great day, but it.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
Was was that the last day you like professionally skated.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
Nope. So my whole goal, once they told me what
it was, I had to have several months of chemotherapy.
Those were eight hour fusions. There were three chemo drugs
that were combined. You see, fifty years ago my cancer
had a five year survival a five percent survival rate.
Five percent, So out of one hundred people died of

(40:41):
this cancer. Okay, I was This was twenty eight years ago.
I had an eighty to ninety percent chance and now
it's ninety five percent. All because of research, right, Wow,
one research scientist in Indiana figured out how to treat
my cancer.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
How do you treat it?

Speaker 1 (40:59):
Three to and chemo drugs they're combined.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
And so did you have those three different drugs, Yeah,
you got them, but that was probably the beginning of
those three drugs being put together.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
Yeah. It was funny because I always joked that I
made testicular cancer cool before Lance Armstrong. Yeah, the next year,
but I was able to come back and be on
tour the next season. Wow. Ye that was after months
of chemotherapy and then at thirty eight stable surgery, they
opened up my whole abdomen and they checked everything, all
the lymph nodes and took out the remaining The tumor

(41:31):
I found was twice the size of a grapefruit. Wow,
and I'm little. How do I not know? Right? Well?

Speaker 2 (41:40):
Your stomach was really killing you though, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
But I mean, how do I how does something that
size not just show up? I know, you know it's yeh.
But so I missed the rest of that tour and
I did all the work, I did the big surgery,
and then I had to wait for everything to knit
to get back on the ice, and then I was
able to get back on tour the next year.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
So I kind of want to talk about some of
your mindset that's happened during all this, because then you
go on to get married and you have four kids,
two you had biologically one, though your second one you
had to do like injections because.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Well, now that's this is it's really wild. There's a
lot of really wild things in this.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Your life just hasn't been easy.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
Well that anyone's easy, but yours just had obstacle obstacle, obstacle,
reward reward obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, reward payoff. But it's like
every time you get a payoff, you get hit with
another obstacle.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
I always thought if anything good were to happen to me,
something bad was going to happen next, right next? Yeah,
so I always kind of dreaded. I was like, oh,
something could happened.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
But that's when your eternal optimism has come.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Well, yeah, because I realized I had it out of order.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
Tell me why.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
I always thought that I was unwanted. So I was adopted,
and then I got sick and I found you know,
so you know, and then I got sick. I got
adopted and got sick, and then I found skating, and
then I wasn't very good, and then this and then
this and then this and then this.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
What I realized was, did you felt unwanted through the
whole time?

Speaker 1 (43:01):
No, because I love my parents, you know, I love
my mom, and and uh my dad was awesome. He
was he was so funny.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
But do you realize.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah, I just when I when I survived cancer, I
realized that I had it all wrong, that for every
bad thing in my life, something good was gonna come
opposite order. Yeah, so I just flipped the switch on order.
So instead of being you know, instead of you know,
sort of being adopted and getting sick, I was like, wait,

(43:35):
I was born. I was unintended, inconvenient, unwanted, but my
mom sought it through, and she brought me to the
world and put me up for adoption immediately. And my
parents that adopted me wanted a big they wanted a
bigger family. And my mom would carry a baby full
term and then the baby would die at birth. So

(43:57):
that happened multiple times. Yeah, three times.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
So did she have any biological children.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
My sister was a survivor of twins. Wow. Yeah, So
my sister was the only one born of my parents.
And then I was adopted, and then when I was four,
they adopted my brother. And it's funny because we look
at like total strangers, like none of us have anything
in common, except whenever I was with my mom, people

(44:23):
would say, oh, you can't deny him, and I look
at my mom and really they think, and she goes, yeah,
you always resemble the ones that love you the most. Yeah,
so that's her. So in this cancer diagnosis, you know,
it was just once I got through it, I became
a cancer survivor and I was at a I was

(44:46):
at a survivors celebration and I was asked to speak
at a survivor celebration in Chicago, and I was in
the back of the room because I was really nervous.
I was pacing, and I was listening to other speakers
to kind of, you know, just get a sense of
what this thing was all about. And girl from a
high school athlete lost her leg to cancer and she said,
you know, the worst thing that's ever happened to me

(45:06):
is cancer. And everybody, oh, they're all survivors. They are
all nodding their heads, and she goes, but I'm here
to tell you the best thing that ever happened to
me was cancer. And I just it was like a
lightning shot hit me. I was like, wait what And
then she went through her story and it was like, yeah,
I get it. This was his second chance. So moving

(45:37):
forward because we were almost there. Right on the third
anniversary of my diagnosis. Tony Thomas, Danny Thomas's son, Danny Thomas,
founded Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital. His son, Tony was
a television and movie producer and he was on the
board of Saint Jude. And his best friend and who

(46:00):
was like his brother, ran a media company did all
the Targets advertising. So I was doing a lot of
stuff for Target at the time. Tony and I got
to be friends through Gary Toby at Target and we just,
you know, we just got to be friends. And Tony
had a guest coming to the show that night, so
I go, Tony's dating. Interesting. I can't wait to see

(46:20):
who he's dating. So there's this girl standing by the
production office and I realized that was Tony's date. So
it was on the third anniversary of my diagnosis, and
I went up and I said hi, And I'd pretty
much stepped away from any kind of relationship. I just
felt broken and toxic and you know, just not I
just felt out of sorts. I didn't feel like I

(46:41):
wanted to be in a relationship, you know, I just
I didn't feel like And so when I met her,
I was like ooh, and I went, that's Tony's date.
You're a jerk walk away And so I talked about
ten minutes and I it's nice to meet you, and
I left. I was like, that was weird, a little
flutter inside, a little first time flutter like that, and

(47:04):
I was like, interesting. So Tony and I were playing
golf later that a few months later, and he's like
on the phone and it's like, oh, is that the
girl from Memphis? And he goes Tracy. I go, I
don't know her name. She goes, no, No, she was
just a guest. She's like a little sister. She's like
a friend. She's not that wasn't a date. And I
go oh. He goes, did you like her? Maybe? Maybe

(47:28):
a little? And he goes, uh, let me see if
I can get her phone number. I think she's moving
to LA this week from Tennessee because I was living
in LA. And I go, okay. So I go to
a barbecue that week and uh, my favorite caddie or
at the golf club. He's a nut, an absolute hilarious guy.
And he goes, hey, man, I do, and I go good.
He goes, you know, my cousin was supposed to come

(47:49):
to that made other plans. And I go, who's your cousin?
He goes, Tracy, you met her Memphis. I go, that's
your Yeah, our mothers are sisters. And it's like, wait
a minute. I just asked Tony Thomas for her number
and he goes, got it right here, stop it.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
And obviously she was talking about you because he knew
the cousin knew that.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
No, the cousin just yeah, So Tony asked for her number.
She mentioned it to Jimmy, her cousin, and Jimmy said,
I got it right here.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
So I was headed to Christy Amaguchi's wedding and I
had a bunch of things. She was moving from Tennessee.
So three weeks later we went out on our first
kind of time together. I guess it was a date,
and we've been together ever since. What I didn't know
is after she met me at the show of Memphis.

(48:38):
On her way back, she was talking to her cousin
Gina that we went together, and she's mentioned that she
met me backstage and Gina said, what's he like? And
Tracey goes, you know, that's the type of man I
see myself marrying someday.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
I love at first sight.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
Yeah, And then it came down to us dating and
then her asking where I was in my face?

Speaker 2 (49:00):
Okay, so talk to me about that. Where were you
in your faith?

Speaker 1 (49:04):
She said, where are you in your relationship with Jesus?
I said, where do you want me to be? And
I told her I didn't. I didn't like denominational religion.
I thought I was divisive. I just thought, who's right,
who's wrong? Who you know? And I just felt it
was just it puts God in a box and it
wasn't fair because I believed in God had to know
much about Jesus. And she said, okay, will you meet
my pastor. I said, absolutely, bring it, let's go, let's

(49:27):
do this thing. And so I met our pastor and
he became like an uncle and guided me, and every
question I ever had about my life was answered.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
Really just in faith and really standing that.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
You know, you look at every character in the Bible
and what they've gone.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
Through through there's so much right, and they're.

Speaker 1 (49:48):
Not always the most like the best people on the planet.
Most of them are damaged.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
You know.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
You've got prostitutes, you got adulterers, you've got murderers. You've
got all these people in the Bible that were used
right too, you know, I just used in really specific ways.
So once I got into the Bible as a book
of history instead of a book.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Of right and wrong and you're viral read it for.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Fairy tales, you know, it was just like, wow, this
all my questions are now answered. I got to get
better at this, you know. So I just dove into
faith and it was really wild that was there that
you know, I got baptized and my wife came up
to me after the baptism, and I always headed back

(50:33):
to the house watch football. She was going out with
her best friend with our son for you know brunch,
you know, and Aidan was just a baby back then,
and she goes, how do you feel? And I said lighter?
It was, you know, because I always tell people, as
human beings, we fail. We're meant to fail, and we

(50:56):
take all our failures and we put them in a bag,
and then we carry the bag around with us, right, and.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
It's who we are and we it's a burden to
carey forever.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
Right. What Jesus did when he went to the cross
was he took our bags and he destroyed them. They're gone,
They're gone, right, So once you drop the bag, lighter, Yeah,
much lighter, and you can step into a relationship now
that's forever, for better and built on the foundations of

(51:26):
love that didn't exist before we were created. Right, So
all of these things have stepped into my life now
and they equipped me for next because it was Aiden
was about fourteen months old. I'm doing my big benefit
in Cleveland.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
And had you started the Scott Hamilton Cares Foundation by
then it was.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
An initiative, it was the CARES initiative at the Cleveland Clinic.
So we were funding research, We're building all these.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
Platforms, and your goal was to figure out what was
missing in cancer.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
Yes, and so the first thing I was missing was
education support. So CARA stands for the Cancer Alliance for
Research Education Survivorship. I never wanted to be a silo ever,
so we created a mentorship program that puts newly diagnosed
patients with survivors. It's called the Fourth Angel, and they
expanded that to caregivers and pediatric caregivers. They do one

(52:18):
hundred pairs a month. It's still at the Cleveland Clinic
doing phenomenal work, the Fourth Angel mentoring program. And then
because your first Angels you're on college is second Angels,
you're on college nurse, third Angels your friends and family.
What was missing was the fourth Angel.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
Someone who's been through it exactly exactly what you've been through.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Yeah, and I didn't know I wanted to quit after
round three a chimo.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
You needed someone who could walk you through it, who'd been.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
There, role model, kind of a life coach.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
With only someone who really has gone through it would
know what was missing.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
When I asked my on colleges how sick am I
gonna be with chemo? He said moderate to severe? And
I said what does that look like? And he said
moderate to severe.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
So anyway, so we created a fourth angel and then
I was the organ grinder's monkey for about maybe five years.
To build chemocare dot com, which is a web I
went on doctor Google, which is where everybody goes when
they get a diagnosis, and you get medical journal papers,
you get things that don't really you know, all people
want is information. So I thought chemo was I was

(53:15):
going to go into a room and they're going to
replace all my bodily fluids. Right, I thought, chemo is
this big deal. It's a bag of chemical therapy. It's
a it's an IV bag.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
It's not like anything laser burning or anything like.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
Just the way the chemo drugs are so toxic you
can't touch them with your skin, and they're putting them
in my body. Right, wow, So I'm watching this chemical
thing app. I was like, Wow, it's just simple. They
put a line in and they just give you, you know,
chemicals that go in and they destroy the weak cells
and some healthy ones, but hopefully the healthy ones will

(53:47):
grow back. And once you get rid of the cancer
and you kill it all, then you go back to life.
And that's what I did. I mean, my normal counts,
I think it was zero to eight. Mine was like
eighty e one hundred. You know, so bad cancer. Right.
So by the time we were done, my accounsel were
at like zero and the tumor that was twice as

(54:09):
big as a grapefruit was now size of a golf ball.
So they took it out and he tell us this stuff,
but there was something there for me, right, So I
did all that. But now I'm fast forward. We're funding research,
we get the education, we had the survivorship program, so
we got everything going. We're growing, we're impacting, we're partnering
with people. We're doing phenomenal work. And I was headed

(54:32):
to Cleveland. I just and my wife I was in
Lake Placid with stars, and I was coming down to Cleveland.
I just was symptomatic, and Tracy was coming up from
Tennessee to the show and no, we're still living in LA.
She was flying from LA and I went in for
headscan because all my symptoms said something there logical, and

(54:58):
they said, here's something in there.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
Just after you finish cancer.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
This was seven years later. Yeah, oh, I go that's
not fair.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
It's not fair. That's not fair at all.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
So they said no, it's like, we don't know what
it is, but we're gonna eat to the bottom of it.
So so I went back to the hotel to me
Tracy and she was just arriving and she goes, what's up?
I go tell you upstairs. So we got up to
the room. Aidan's on the floor playing with the phone,
banging the you know what kids do. And she looks
at me and he goes, what's up, And I go,
I have a brain tumor. And she just grabbed both

(55:31):
my hands and started to pray, like not even a beat.
It was first thing like why why this? Why? No
pity party? It was straight to the Lord and she
prayed and it was the single most powerful moment in
my life. And I've had a lot of big moments,
you know, a lot of big moments, and that was
the biggest. And so what did that do for you?

(55:54):
It just it it's solidify, Like if my faith were gelatinous,
if my faith were soft clay. It became foundational, concrete.
In that moment. It just was like bam, this is it.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
This is this is it? This is it?

Speaker 1 (56:13):
So they couldn't figure out what it was, so they
had to do a biopsy and they went and they
said it was the crazy friend Joe and I was
born with, you.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
Know, was the reason you had the mystery illness when
you're a kid.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
Right, So, how how am I supposed to be angry
at this brain tumor when it made every great thing
in my life happen? Wow? Right? How often do we
go there that is.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
So powerful and so profound and so unbelievably wise to
be able to do that, that takes so much wisdom
than you to do.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
That's very generous of you to say that, But it does.
But it's one of those things where it was like,
it wasn't a pity party. It was it is what
it is, whatever it takes. That was our mantra.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
It is what it is whatever.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
And I was watching it was really funny that I
was watching. I like to watch, you know, sports. I
was watching Sports Center and Terrell Owens was a wide receiver.
He went into the Ravens, you know, and he was
doing ray Lewis's dance and he was making fun of
ray Lewis in the Baltimore Ravens Stadium. He was mocking him,
and ray Lewis is somebod you don't want.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
To mock, right, That's some boldness right there.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
So they're they're baiting ray Lewis into kind of getting
you know, talking trash about Terrell Owens and ray Lewis.
I'll never forget it as long as I live. He
just said, hey, no, no, no, I love TiO yo Tyo.
You know, I know he's had it rough, but he
has no idea where I've been. He goes, I've been

(57:37):
through it, man, And I'm listening to him because I'm
seeking perspective. And he goes, he goes, I'll pray for Teo.
He goes, because I'm here to tell you, is as
deep as I have dug down low, that's as high
as I'm going to go. And it was just like this.
It was like another lightning bolt. It was like Bam,
all right, let's go, let's do this, let's this is no.

(58:01):
I'm in charge. I'm going to make this thing happen.
And so it was two years ago. I'm in Canton,
Ohio at this barbecue thing they had for you know,
NFL Hall of Famers and Ray Lewis walks in and
I go, I've been wanting to tell you this for
how many years? Since two thousand and four? And he

(58:23):
goes what? And I told him the story and his
eyes filled up with tears and he just picked me
up and he hugged me as hard as he could.
You know, it's broke every bone in my body. But
it's those things. We're all in this together, right.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
And you never know what somebody's going through.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
You never know what words are going to give somebody
that kicking the pants they need in order to get
back in the game. And let's do this. So you know,
it just feels like, you know, it's what it's been,
that one thing after another thing. But so I basically

(59:00):
when I had the biopsy, I was in the hospital
for just a little while just to keep an eye
on things, and then I packed my bag and I
left near ICU, and then I go to I go
back to life, and then life's a little different because
ion one all medications, and then I get to twenty ten,

(59:23):
decided to come back to skating to see if I
could do it. At fifty one. It was fun. It
was hard, but it was fun, and I ended up
getting backflip back at fifty one. I'm doing all these things,
these crazy things, and I wrecked my shoulder. I caught
an edge and I went flying, and I thought I
hurt my hip, but I tore everything in my shoulder.
Kind of lived with it for a while. Every time

(59:45):
my lad to jump, it'd be like pop pop pop,
and you know, just and every time my son Max
would drop something in the back seat, you know, I'd
have to reach back and pick it up. And it
was like, I'm gonna pass out. So I gotta get
this fixed. So I was. I got surgery. I got
surgery on my shoulder, and then I was in physical
therapy and I got symptomatic again. Oh no, and I'm thinking, oh,

(01:00:06):
not again. So I went back and they scanned and
they go, yeah, it's back, and they go, but this
time it's presenting really well for surgery, and it's like,
oh okay. But it felt like getting kicked in the stomach. Yeah.
And where I told Tracy the first time she prayed,
this time I told her and she burst into tears.
It just felt different. Now we could spend an hour

(01:00:29):
on this story easily, but it was there that I
really felt the Lord's presence.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
You did.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
Yeah, So I'm big with eights. I was born eight
twenty eight fifty eight. I traced eights on the ice.
Eights are everywhere ehere for everyone me, And it's just
one of those things where wherever there's an eight. Right,
So we're going to Boston to get surgery done by
the number one guy, guy that invented the surgery, who's
done hundreds of thousands of these surgeries, right, just knows

(01:01:01):
the game better than anybody blessed have access. Buddy of
mine set me up at a hotel in Boston and
I go to the room number and it's room thirteen thirteen,
and I went, oh, crap, that's not good.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Wrong numbers, wrong numbers.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
So then I go in. The surgery didn't go well
as planned. There was an artery that wasn't where it
was supposed to be. Nick did turn into an aneurysm.
So nine brain surgeries later, stop. Yeah, I go blind
in my right eye. They get most of it back
and then I'm released on August eighth, like thank you.

(01:01:43):
But then I go back. The surgeon that was obliterating
the aneurysm was on the eighth floor of the building.
When they came out of surgery. I was in recovery
bay eight and all these eights show up. So You're like,
I know I'm gonna be okay. I know I'm gonna
be okay. But what's weird? Is I go, what is

(01:02:03):
about this? Thirteen? Thirteen? Add up the numbers, got terrible math.
One plus three equals four plus one equals five plus
three equals eight. Stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
So it was eight.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
From day one it was eight. So anyway, so get
back to life, right and now uh again? It was
two thousand and four. First I first one twenty ten,
second one twenty sixteen. I go in for scan and
they go, it's back and they were gonna give you

(01:02:39):
a surgical and a medical option. And I'm sitting there going,
why aren't I scared? Why don't I worried? Why didn't
I anything? And they go, no, oh, here's a surgical option.
All I felt was get strong.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
It was like, hurt in your head, get strong?

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
Yeah that kind of get get strong. What's that? I
don't know that overwhelming? Since E gets strong, It's like,
I don't know what that means. Okay, So then they
bring in the medical there's a brand new drug that
works to shrink your tumor. It's not a cure, but
at least it'll stop it from doing mischief. What do
you think? I go, get strong? I go, oh h.
So they go, what do you think you want to do?

(01:03:11):
And I go, I'm gonna go home and get strong,
And they go, what does that look like? And I go,
I have no idea, Like, I just know I'm supposed
to go home and get strong. So I went home,
and I didn't know it's something. It was just overwhelming.
It wasn't a voice. It was just like this, like it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
Was yeah, it was to be denied.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
Yeah, And so I didn't know if I was supposed
to be strong physically or emotionally, or mentally or spiritually.
So I did what I did in high school. I
chose you all the above, just do it all.

Speaker 3 (01:03:43):
And you say that too, like being prepared, Like if
you're really have something stressful happening in your life, prepare
across the board. So then when you walk into the
situation nothing, you're as fully prepared as can be. Right, Yeah,
is that where you kind of adopted that method?

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Part of that? But then I'm reading the Bible and
they asked Jesus, you know what's the greatest, and he said,
love the Lord with all of your strength and all
of your heart, and all of your mind and all
of your soul.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
There is so much strong with God.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
Yeah. So it's been remarkable that in January it'll be
the tenth anniversary of that diagnosis and I haven't touched it.
Have you had it checked or anything? No, well, I did,
but COVID kind of made it weird. So for ten
years I've looked at this and I'm not saying that
out of pride or anything else. I'm just praying. I'm
just praying for people that you use what's in there,

(01:04:45):
You open yourself up to allowing God to guide you,
and he will. And Jesus is always there. And I
feel like I have these guardian angels and you do,
and it's it was remarkable. I was, and I see
you with an aneurysm, and I was. Every fifteen minutes
they come in to check your vitals and I see you.

(01:05:06):
So I'm in now, I see you and they're doing
all these things. I couldn't get any sleep. They're just
coming in every fifteen minutes. So I'm praying and praying
and this odd nurse comes in. I always say that
because she had an odd accent and she had a
weird energy tour right, And she goes, oh, do I
hear voices? And I go yeah. She goes what are
you talking to? And I was praying and she goes, oh,

(01:05:27):
I like to pray too, and I go, that's good.
She goes she goes, oh, so who do you pray to?
And I say pray to God and Jesus and she goes, oh,
I love that. That is so beautiful and what do
you do when you pray? And I go, I've just
expressed my gratitude for everything I've been given. And she goes, oh,
that's great, and she goes, who's got to you? And

(01:05:48):
I go, I guess my father. I guess and she goes, oh,
I love that. Are you a father? And I said
I am. She goes, huh, Now, if one of your
sons we're scared and hurting in that risk, wouldn't you
want them to come to you with that? I said yes.

(01:06:11):
So in that moment, I changed the way I pray.
I'm just on my knees begging all the time, and
I never saw that nurse again. Wow, So I don't
think she was a nurse.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
She was an angel. So you went from how was
your prayer and what did it change?

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
To it changed too. I can't do this without you.
I need you and I'm desperate grateful. I'm grateful still. Yeah,
but it's not it's not like I have anything together.
The more I step into faith, the more I realize
how how needy I am.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
Yeah, you know, it's just but that's where we're supposed
to be.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
That's where we're supposed to be, and it's and it's
amazing that it's not like we're not self reliant. It's
not like we're not strong. It's not like any of
those things, because you know, you read the stories of faith,
and every one of them is you know, they all needed,
they all needed, and they were all instructed, and they
all had an identity in God. But when if they

(01:07:11):
denied it, things didn't go well.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
That is so true. That is so true.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
And then you look at the connection with all of it,
you know, it's just it's just remarkable that the whole
arc and the more I learn, the more I want
to learn, the more I the more I learn, the
more I grow, the more I grow, the more I
want to grow more and the more I want it
to be the centerpiece of my life.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
And that's I feel like, that's really amazing because like
you're Scott Hamilton and friends of it that you're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
And I was talking to my friend about you actually.

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):
Today when I was dropping my daughter off at school,
they had little chapel and I was talking to my
friend Kristin and I was telling her I was interviewing you,
and she said, Scott Hamilton changed my life. She's like,
when I was six years old, he pulled me out
on the ice rink. I don't know where y'all were.
I was like, did you ice skate? She's like no,
but he pulled me out on the ice rink and
like did something. I don't know what you'd do with
children on the ice, but like you gave her this
opportunity to be out there. And she's like, I'll never

(01:08:03):
forget it. It was like a moment marked in time. And
I was like, you know what, I feel like that
is who you are just from like observing you and
like learning your story and like understanding your heart. Now,
especially after this interview, I feel like you are truly
just trying to use everything that has happened to you
and all that you have learned, and all these opportunities

(01:08:25):
and all these highs and these lows and now all
the wisdom that you've gained. And I just feel like
you are trying to like just pour it on to
people as big as you can with the bandwidth that
you have, with the resources that you have. And like
this event that you're doing in November, it's coming up
when November twenty third, And how many years is this
that you've done this?

Speaker 1 (01:08:43):
This is our ninth when I bridged on, this is
our thirtieth one.

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):
And it's for cancer research, and it's to extend all
like and you have the goal to eradicate cancer and like,
but like, I truly feel like you are here to
like give people hope and to use what you've been
given to bless others.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Well, you know, it's like they say that an optimist
is someone that tells you to have a nice day
when everything's going their way right, But to me, it's
like I'm not sugarcoating. I'm not trying to be hypocritical

(01:09:23):
or anything else, or trying to ask somebody to do
something I wouldn't do myself. But in this I know
that cancer is curable. I've grown to understand that our
bodies create the cancer. Our bodies are equipped to pretty
much handle any other disease if our immune systems are strong.

(01:09:43):
So why don't we just teach our immune systems how
to detect and destroy the cancer. So eleven years ago
we put that steak in the ground. And three years
after we put that stake in the ground, the first
immunotherapy drug hit the market and it was Carte and
it was like, we didn't fund that, but it was
like confirmation and that we're on the right path. And
so now you know, you'll see so many of the

(01:10:06):
really effective therapies for a lot of the no hope
cancers especially are based in immunotherapy. It's like getting your
immune system too. Yeah, you just got to figure it out.
It's like training T cells, like our T cells are
fundamental to our immune systems. Is training them to say, oh, wait,

(01:10:27):
I fid you yesterday, but you don't belong here, you
need to go get out. Yeah, And so those T
cells live in our bodies and they're always there on
the search for things that don't belong, things that are
potentially harmful, and so we fund immunotherapy research exclusively, or
targeted therapies, anything that will treat the cancer and spare

(01:10:49):
the patient harm.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
Wow, that's amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
Well, I had chemotherapy and I'm here because of it.
But I know we've evolved as a scientific community beyond that.
You know, It's like nobody remembers how George Washington died.
Do you remember. No, he had an infection, and back then,
when you had an infection, they would blood let. So
they would blood let and you build new blood and

(01:11:13):
it was supposed to make you well, I guess, but
they went too far and he bled to death. Yeah,
but that was the state of the art back then.
Why do we Yeah, that's why I say nostalgia is expensive.
It is, It'll cost you everything. So let's look forward.
Let's not look back, keep looking for and keep moving forward.

(01:11:34):
We can't change anything that lived back there. We can
step into the new, and we can step into authority,
and we can step into the promise, and we can
step into you know, there's so many things that I
wish I would have done differently, you know, as a
knucklehead kid, I wish I would have spent more time
with my mom, you know, but that wasn't going to

(01:11:55):
be my story. But that doesn't mean that I can't
take with me everywhere and talk about her. I mean,
I mean I get cards from people that were in
her class, you know that she taught, and they just
tell me story after story after story, and meeting more
people that had my dad that have forgiven him. I'm
just joking. It's just it's remarkable that there there are

(01:12:19):
very few advocations that you can get into where you'll
be remembered for the rest of your life. And teachers
and coaches. Yeah, I remember every coach I ever had,
and I remember everything they ever taught me. I remember
almost every single one of my teachers. Wow. But I
get some slack on that because I was only half
here and half there. Yeah, so it was brief, you know,

(01:12:41):
in some respects. But you know, we're all in this together,
and we're all in this to to make a difference.
And you know, we've done the show for nine years
and I and it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:50):
Tell us about what to expect.

Speaker 3 (01:12:52):
The bridge, we do a different speedwagon and there's like
a super band that's been formed for.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
This, right, Yeah, well six Wire is the they got
the house band. Okay, and when the first time we
had the Journey guys. Here is Jonathan Kanan and.

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
So they're playing while people are ice skating.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
Yeah. So six Wire is the house band for every
artist coming in.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
So we have lead singers Okay. John Elafonte who used
to be the singers, used to be a former former
of Kansas singing Kansas and he's doing a foreigner song.
We have the former lead singer of Chicago and Jason
Chef who's with the band for thirty years. He's coming in.
We have Wally Palmer from the Romantics coming in. Mike

(01:13:36):
Reno from lover Boy is coming in. We have Kevin Cronin,
formerly of Rio Speedwagon coming in, and Jason Durlatka who's
a Journey He is their lead singer. Aren't open It
is their lead singer. But he sounds like Perry and
he's got the voice of an angel and he's become

(01:13:57):
my good luck charm.

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
So they'll all be playing and singing while you have.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
This is insane. Every one of the songs was like
a monster hit.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (01:14:06):
And they're all performing for Olympic champions skating in front
of them.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
This is incredibleun So all this is to raise money.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
For cares and our goals to change. So we've had
in the last eleven years, we've had one hundred and
eleven partnerships and it's been extraordinary to see, Like on
the fortieth anniversary my Olympic gold medal, we invested in
a metastatic millanoma study immunotherapy in Boston three years before

(01:14:39):
my fortieth anniversary, And on the night of my fortieth anniversary,
I was able to announce that metastatic melanoma breast cancer
that killed my mom was now going to ammunotherapy clinical
trial forty seven years after I lost her.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
Gosh.

Speaker 3 (01:14:56):
And that's why you can't look back at nostalgia because
you're like, man, I wish they had the treatments back
then that they had now. But it's like, because of
her life and because of your journey and because of
what you've gone through it and I know, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:15:07):
It's crazy. You just got to show up every day, yeah,
with intention, yep, and got a remarkable team and we're collaborative.
We're not a silo. We've done some things on our own,
but in those one hundred and eleven.

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
You get with people.

Speaker 1 (01:15:22):
Well, yeah, I mean we partner, we partner, We partner,
we partner. I don't ever really want to feel like,
you know, I have a big, big, big mentality that
the greatest gifts ever given are to those that will
never know the origin of the gift. So you just
put stuff out there. And you know, Danny Thomas was
my son's, my youngest son, Max's middle name is Thomas

(01:15:46):
the Thomas family, because I wanted him to know that
one person could change the world.

Speaker 2 (01:15:50):
That is so and you are that person to Scott, I.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
Don't know, I'm born, I'm a work in progress. You
are still that knuckle had eighteen year old kid.

Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
Yeah, but you but you've taken it all and you've
transformed it on to so much good and so much
growth and so much knowledge and your spiritual knowledge and
the wisdom that you share. I mean literally, you are
just a walking, walking wisdom what you've lived through and
what you've seen.

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
You call my wife, Yeah, I'm sure she does. She does.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
She's amazing. Man.

Speaker 3 (01:16:22):
I would talk to you forever. We are already at
an hour and fifteen, so I'm going to wrap up.

Speaker 1 (01:16:25):
With November twenty third, But so Arena if you're not.

Speaker 2 (01:16:29):
There, you're missing out.

Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
Well, you're missing out, and we really have bold, audacious goals.
What are the goals to end this. Nobody needs to
die of cancer ever. Again, you're if you're going to
get it, probably with the food we eat and everything else. Yeah,
so let's figure out a way to get you through it,
like any other illness.

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):
I love that. And there is it so a death sentence?

Speaker 1 (01:16:55):
Well no, it's like it's funny how when I was
diagnosed with cancer, we came across a survey on college
in nursing society survey and they said what's your greatest
fear in newly diagnosed patients? Right, and thirty percent said death,
forty two percent said treatment. People would rather die than
go through the treatment. So we want to change that.

(01:17:16):
We want to change it to be where you have
everything inside your body that needs to be there, except
we need to teach your T cells or your immune
system how to detect and destroy the cancer. We need
to help give you that assistance. And I've heard it
said by the CEO of Maffit Cancer Center in Tampa.
I said he sees a day in the very near future,
and I one hundred percent believe it in the very

(01:17:38):
near future where no one dies of cancer. You get it,
and you know early detection is still the best cure.
But all our goals are to fund the research, fund
the science, and we know more now than ever before.
It's funny. The science is way up here and the
funding is way down here. If we can close the gap,

(01:17:59):
we can reach our goals so that nobody has to
die ever again. No eighteen year old boys, e we're
gonna have to bury his mom and eighteen year old
boys need their moms because they're all knuckleheads.

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
Sorry, what a life.

Speaker 3 (01:18:12):
What I started off seeing your legend and I end
confirming that factor. What a legend that you are, Scott Hamilton.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
You bless me, what a life giving me this platform
and uh.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
Everyone get out there. November eighteenth, Bridge Down Arena, November
twenty third, November twenty third, November twenty.

Speaker 1 (01:18:29):
Third, four pm. We moved it up an hour because
we realize that everything we do is family friendly.

Speaker 3 (01:18:34):
I appreciate that that makes it fun to go.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
Well, yeah, everybody can come, take the old family and
it's really cool.

Speaker 2 (01:18:41):
You would buy tickets Bridge Down.

Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
Arena, box Office or Ticketmaster or you can go on
scott Cares dot org. We do a dinner at the
Omni afterwards. If you buy a ticket to the dinner,
you get preferred seating at the ice show and the
dinner is a blast. Okay, if you haven't been to
an event at the Omni Hotel, they're on first class,
it's platinum class, and it's just we have a great night.

(01:19:07):
Matt Rogers will be our auctioneer that night. He's the
voice of the Tennessee Titans. He's hilarious. And again, just
all our artists and all our skaters again, Nathan Chen's
coming back, and Katie Gardieva is coming back, and all
of these Olympic champions and these you know Olympians and
world champions, they're all coming back because you know, this
is something that touches us all and we have an

(01:19:29):
opportunity to change it forever and for the better. So
if you have an opportunity to change the world forever
and the better, better, Yeah, not a bad idea. It's
like start there, you know, and it's you know, it's
like a cup of coffee. It's nothing to go to
the show, but it's it's it is changing the world.

(01:19:52):
We had an event last night for a very difficult cancer,
very small cancer. Small cancers don't get funding. We partner
with an organization last night with Gary Sinise and he
lost his son to a very rare cancer and again
we just partnered with him last night to change that
cancer forever. It's incredible and the lead researcher from MD

(01:20:15):
Anderson was there, and it's that's what we do. We
just fund really smart people to solve problems.

Speaker 2 (01:20:22):
It's incredible, Scott, that's incredible.

Speaker 1 (01:20:24):
And it's never a problem until it knocks on your door.
I know, bad things only happen to other people.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
Until they happened to you, right, that is so true.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
I've learned that color.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):
You learn that.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
But it's fine because every one of those has brought
me here.

Speaker 2 (01:20:40):
Well, you you've let it, You've let it teach you.

Speaker 3 (01:20:42):
So many a lot of people can't learn the lesson
and can't learn the higher message. You have and that
is an act of God, true, and that's like letting
God in to see the bigger picture. And that's that's
very brave to be able to get there and be
able to open up and get there. And you have,
and you let your life become this beautiful tabis all
your experiences because of it, well, thank you. I always

(01:21:03):
wrap up with leave your Light, and it's just super straightforward.
But what inspiration do you want to leave with people?

Speaker 1 (01:21:11):
Oh? Man, I guess based on everything we've talked about.
It's just let the challenge and just let the challenges
of your life do the work, allow them to take
you to places beyond your wildest expectations. You know, it's
we wake up when when we're threatened, all of a sudden,
the adrenaline kicks in. You know, we're more aware of things.

(01:21:34):
But you know, whatever is going on in your life,
allow those challenges to do the work to make you stronger, deeper,
and more alive than ever. It's it's really easy to
go in too, dig yourself a hole and destroy yourself
a gigantic pity party and.

Speaker 3 (01:21:56):
Be like, I hate this, How could this happen to me?
This isn't fair. All those things which you will feel,
But then it's fine.

Speaker 1 (01:22:01):
To feel that, but then you go but this is
an opportunity for opportunity. Wow, And as soon as you
realize that this life isn't the end, then it's that
changes everything as wow. So you know I just let
let your challenges do the work, and you know there's

(01:22:21):
gonna be parts of your life that you don't like.
And this is what I tell my kids all the time.
I always ask them what's the greatest strength? Because I
had to figure this thing out and a lot of
people will try to put it on the strength. Right, Well,
if you're the strongest, I didn't work out for Samson,
you know, right. If you're the smartest, well here's here's

(01:22:46):
the The greatest strength is a lack of weakness. Figure
out where you're weak and get strong.

Speaker 2 (01:22:53):
That's it, Scott.

Speaker 1 (01:22:54):
Hamilton, get strong.

Speaker 2 (01:22:57):
You are incredible. Thank you for your life. Thank you,
thank for sharing your story.

Speaker 3 (01:23:01):
So openly, and thank you for changing the world in
such a profound way.

Speaker 2 (01:23:04):
It is such an honor that I can talk to you.

Speaker 1 (01:23:06):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:23:07):
November twenty third, it's Goott Hamilton and Friends' event at
britshn Arena.

Speaker 2 (01:23:11):
Everyone get their tickets now.

Speaker 1 (01:23:12):
Rock and roll.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
It's rock and roll.

Speaker 1 (01:23:14):
Every song was a massive hit with all these Olympic
champion skaters. It's sensory overload at the highest level and
you won't regret coming. So be there.

Speaker 2 (01:23:24):
I love it. Thank you, Scott, thank you Bye,

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Host

Caroline Hobby

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Scott Hamilton: The Power of Purpose, Perseverance, and Joy