May 28, 2010
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The words coming from the other end of the phone blindsided him. He had just left home after spending winter break there with his family, and when he left, everything seemed fine.
Only it wasn’t.
The voice coming from the receiver on Scott Lieberman’s phone was his father, Lou Kacyn. Scott’s mother, Patti, was losing her battle with colon cancer. Her days were numbered.
In February 2007, Patti was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, the same disease that had taken her mother’s life. Multiple treatments were attempted, but each continued to fail. As the days passed, Patti grew weaker internally, but she refused to show the effects of the disease externally.
“It was a situation that my mom and dad knew was worsening, but they never told me or my brother,” said Scott (pictured with his brother Matthew), a 2010 senior on Vanderbilt’s men’s tennis team. “She was really strong in the sense that she didn’t want what was happening to her to affect me and my brother.”
The privacy Patti upheld with her worsening condition made the phone call from his father that much more surprising to Scott.
“Every time I would talk to her on the phone, I would ask her how she was doing because I knew what was going on, but she would always tell me she was doing fine or feeling better,” Scott said. “She would do anything to keep my spirits up.
“I wouldn’t have come back to school second semester had I known, but she made it seem like she was OK. When my dad called and said she was in the hospital, it was very shocking.”
That night, Scott did the only thing he could do; he boarded a plane to head home to Riverwoods, Ill. When he boarded the plane, his future was chock full of uncertainty. The 2009 spring semester was less than a month in, and he did not know when or if he would be back that semester.
After a courageous battle against the deadly disease, Patti would pass away on Feb. 5, 2009, from colon cancer.
“It was definitely the worst month of my life,” Scott said. “I took the semester off, stayed home with my dad and brother. It is hard to put into words. Saying it was a hard time is kind of an understatement.”
The news of Patti’s death came shortly after Vanderbilt’s tennis team had begun dual play. Although Scott was not in line to be among the top six players during the spring, his loss affected the close-knit team in ways the team had not felt.
“He was very close to his mom, and I think everybody was really shook up when he had to drop out of school,” men’s tennis coach Ian Duvenhage said. “When he told everyone she had a few weeks to live and he was going to go home to be with her, that brought reality home in a hurry.”
The team was startled by Scott’s loss. They would trudge forward without him, but they were not the same team. They would finish the year with a 5-17 record.
“Scott plays things close to the vest sometimes, and I don’t think he talked to the guys on the team very much about what was going on,” Duvenhage said. “The guys are very fond of him, and clearly everybody felt for him. When Patti passed away, that was a very traumatic time not only for him, but for some other people on the team, also.”
Although Scott was hundreds of miles away from the team, he never felt as though he was not a part of it. Through his time away, his teammates and coaches were integral parts of his support system.
“I had such a strong support group,” Scott said. “I had my teammates and my coaches constantly there, letting me know how things are going. Even though I was at home, I wasn’t ever out of the loop. Everyone was sending me messages and calling me just to see how I was doing. It was something that I was pretty lucky to have.”
Because he was not in Nashville for the semester, Scott was unable to take classes at Vanderbilt. Instead, he stayed on track to graduate on time by taking classes at Northwestern. In May, Scott graduated from Vanderbilt after majoring in engineering science and economics.
After spending the spring semester and summer in his hometown with his brother, Matthew, then a high school senior, and his father, Scott returned to campus in August. Joining Scott on campus for his senior year was Matthew, who just completed his freshman year at Vanderbilt, the school Patti had always wanted him to attend.
“It was really bittersweet when we found out he was coming to Vanderbilt,” Scott said. “It was a few days after my mom passed away that my brother got the acceptance letter.”
Having dealt with such tragedy, no one would have thought differently had Scott transferred to be closer to his family, but he had no interest in that. His teammates and his friends were at Vanderbilt.
“It never really crossed my mind to switch schools,” Scott said. “I love Vanderbilt. I started my career here and made so many friends. I had one year left, and I knew it was better just to go back and finish.”
The passing of his mother was not Scott’s first loss. When he was four, he lost his biological father to a heart attack. Through it all, the losses have shaped Scott into the person he is today.
“It has definitely shaped me in how I go about living my life and treating other people because I know that what we are given every day is a blessing,” Scott said. “Especially playing collegiate tennis, going to a top 20 school, you can’t take it for granted. The main thing it really taught me is that the most important thing in life is the friendships you make and connections you make with people. You can go to the best school or have the best job in the world, but at the end of the day, what matters most are the people that you surround yourself with.”
Patti has been gone for more than a year now, but Scott has ensured her legacy will not be forgotten. Shortly after Patti passed away, Scott was having a tough time sleeping one night when an idea struck him. He would start an organization to try to find a cure for colon cancer.
“I had one of those `a-ha’ moments, and I wrote it down on a piece of paper at three in the morning. The next morning I came down at breakfast and told my dad that I wanted to start a foundation for my mom.”
The organization is called Advantage Love, a not-for-profit, 501 (c)(3) organization, which raises funds to find a cure for colon cancer. Scott designed the Web site, www.advantagelove.org, for the organization, which raised more than $12,000 at its first fundraising event in Chicago. The beneficiary of the organization is the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, but Scott hopes to add others, including Vanderbilt.
Since graduating in May, Scott plans to spend the next few months concentrating on the organization and hopes to have a second fundraising event planned before beginning a career in September with Intuit, a software company based in California.
The organization will never be able to bring his mother back, but he hopes it can one day save others from colon cancer.
