Sir Purr
Well-known member
- Mar 16, 2019
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Mills even met with a small group of the media for an emotional interview. But he didn’t like to leave anyone in tears or feeling down.
“The day-to-day deal, unless you witnessed it, you would almost find it hard to believe,” Proehl said. “You hear the horror stories of the cancer treatment and what it does to you. You hear about people getting treatment on Monday and they’re laid out all week. They get back on their feet around the end of the week and then they feel OK until the next time they get it done, and then it zaps them again.
“To see him get treatment on Monday and be back out there on the practice field on Wednesday, it was hard to feel sorry for yourself, bitching about having to go to practice to do something you get paid to do that you grew up loving doing. It put things in perspective in a hurry.”
Bruce Speight, who worked in the Media Relations department then and now is Manager of Social Engagement and Alumni Affairs for the Panthers, added: “The dude was just awesome. You had so much respect for him – and this may sound weird – but you had so much respect for him that to feel sorry for him or pity him because of his situation would be to dishonor who he was and what he stood for. So you tried to take great pride in trying to maintain an environment where there was normalcy, where nobody was dwelling on what he was going through, no one was hanging on that. You were determined to create normalcy out of respect for him.
“We all loved him so much that when he was with us, we did everything we could to just focus on the moment.”
So everyone kept pounding. It was what Sam Mills wanted.
He ended up outliving the doctors’ original prognosis by 17 months. One month after giving his infamous speech, he was on the sidelines for Super Bowl XXXVIII, coaching his linebackers.
It wasn’t until April of 2005 that he finally succumbed to the disease at age 45. But the “Keep Pounding” legacy he started was only in its infancy.