Brian Till's Fearless Cancer Fight

Brian Till, and his perfectly coiffed hair, bubble-butt, and big smile, have been a fixture in sports car and open-wheel racing paddocks for 30 years.  First as a champion driver and then as a versatile, world-class broadcaster, he has always been the consummate professional and team player.

Whether he is mispronouncing Romain Dumas’ name or waxing eloquent about “The best in the business,” he has been the soundtrack to many of the races we have all enjoyed over the years.  If you don’t know Brian, imagine a professional broadcaster, but smaller:-)

Those who have worked with him have marveled at his attention to detail and obsessive preparation and have been annoyed by his color-coded, custom-bound binders for every race-weekend he was covering.

For this reason, his TV family was not happy when we heard he was postponing his treatment against throat cancer so that he could complete the seasons’ events he had scheduled.  It was not a surprise to any of us that he was putting his needs behind those of others as this is who he is,but we have decided (against his protests) to step in to give him the best chance to beat this adversary.

In addition to his professional roles, he is now also playing an increased role as Mr Mom to his two sons, Sam and Conor, as they finish their schooling, a role he relishes and excels at.

The off-season in racing is always long and the freelancers that drive the cars and the microphones need to squirrel away as many nuts as they can before the checks start coming again in the spring.  Since this winter will be a longer one for Brian and with some substantial unexpected expenses, we want to make sure that he and the boys are well taken care of so that monkey brain of his that obsesses over every detail can relax and focus exclusively on getting better.

The good news is that the prognosis for getting better and being ready to rock when the season gets under way in January is very good.  Between now and then though, is a very tough road.  Getting better means starting a radiation and chemotherapy regimen right away that is aggressive and increasingly unpleasant, as it becomes almost impossible to swallow.  This will require Brian to stay near the Cleveland Clinic for the latter rounds, which will require housing and likely some full-time assistance.

Any money raised here will go to help Brian and the boys meet all of their needs during this time and any excess funds would go towards raising awareness of HPV-related head and neck cancers, which comprise up to 80% of all new head and neck cancer cases.  This is a worthy cause with much low-hanging fruit as HPV-related cancers are the ONLY cancers that presently have an effective vaccine, so getting this word out is high on Brian’s priority list going forward.

Thanks for your help and attention.

Sincerely,

Tommy Kendall, Justin Bell and the greater racing community

Brian Till=BT=BeatThis