John Ryan, our Dad, husband, brother, uncle and friend, is one of those people who never seems to worry about too many things, being quoted as saying ‘Life is a long race’. It describes his view on the world, which is one which doesn’t dwell on problems, sees goodness and fun in the little things (such as sneaky meat pies whilst in hospital) and a helping hand to anyone who needs it.
This attitude has already seen him recover from a week in ICU, two weeks with a feeding tube and a strong drive to get his left side moving again (limited movement since the surgery on his tumour).
From a young age, Dad has always been an active person. He played sport throughout his youth, long distance running and touch football with his friends and children in a team called the Barbarians for over ten years.
Dad did his first city to surf in 1981 with a time of 88 minutes with his little sister, Anne, after all of her friends had backed out of the race. She recalls him being a great encourager, especially up Heartbreak Hill. Since then he has participated in many community fun runs with his children – often jogging beside one of us to keep us going. His encouraging attitude and example have paid off, as we now all enjoy running and have a ‘never give up’ attitude.
When we learnt about Dad having Glioblastoma naturally we wanted to learn more. In our search for more information, we discovered the Mark Hughes Foundation and decided that we wanted to channel Dad’s never give up attitude and raise funds to help our Dad and other people who have this type of cancer.
As we told our family about Dad’s illness and our attempts at fundraising, others have joined in. Dad is someone who has helped so many people along the way: offering free building advice (as long as there is a cup of tea and a biscuit); with his wife, Philippa, helping local young people and families who have fallen on hard times, with a warm home, a friendly phone call and help with their young children when they haven’t had other grandparents or parents to support them.
This selfless help has paid off as now he has so many visitors, sponsors for the city to surf and many family members running the city to surf for him!
We can’t wait to run the city to surf – it’s been many years since our last, and we are so happy to be doing it with the Mark Hughes Foundation as research into brain cancer needs much more support.
Nick, Vanessa and Steph
Team Barbarians have raised almost $20k for MHF! You can support the team here – https://city2surf24.grassrootz.com/mark-hughes-foundation/barbarians?tab=leaderboard
