Andy Hoffman, the father of Nebraska Cornhuskers fan and brain cancer sufferer Jack Hoffman, died Monday at his home in Atkinson, Nebraska. He was 42 years old.
Team Jack Foundation has announced its death.
Andy Hoffman, a lawyer, spent the last decade of his life raising more than $ 8 million for Team Jack, a fundraising player to end pediatric brain cancer, only to give in to brain cancer himself. His diagnosis in July 2020 seemed incomprehensible, that two people in the same family could have brain cancer; that Andy, who ran a marathon and worked non-stop, had Glioblastoma multiforme, a rare and very aggressive cancer with a survival rate of about a year.
“This is such a horrible disease,” his wife, Bri, wrote in a Facebook post last week. “Even though Andy’s diagnosis was 7 months ago, we are still denying that this is happening.”
Hoffman sought a second and third opinion and gathered in two strokes to get home from the Mayo Clinic in early fall. He had two missions: to raise as much money as possible for Jack’s team and to spend every second he had with Bri, Jack and his daughters, Ava and Reese.
They went to cross-country meetings and basketball games and on a hunting trip. Andy, a passionate Nebraska football fan who put Jack in a Cornhuskers blouse when he was little, could see his son playing his football season at Atkinson West Holt High. Jack is now 15 years old and is part of a clinical trial that prevented his tumor from developing. He’s a lineman, just like his father in high school.
When Andy Hoffman’s condition worsened, Jack would come home from school and help him take care of his father. In early February 2021, Andy contracted COVID-19 and, according to Facebook’s Bri post, “quickly obtained a fusion of monoclonal antibodies and did an excellent job. He recovered and had no symptoms after about 5 days. But an MRI shortly after he recovered from COVID-19 revealed that his cancer had spread and Andy’s health was rapidly declining.
The family’s battle with cancer began in 2011, when Jack was diagnosed with cancerous glioma at the age of five. The Hoffmans were initially told that most of the tumor the size of Jack’s golf ball could not be removed, but Andy, after extensive research, found a doctor in Boston who managed to extract more than 90%. from the tumor.
Before Jack’s operation, Andy arrived in Nebraska in the hope that Jack would be able to meet his favorite player, running back Rex Burkhead. Andy didn’t expect to hear back, but Burkhead, now with the New England Patriots, was forced to meet them at noon. He took them on a tour of Memorial Stadium in Lincoln and called them on Friday before Jack’s operation to offer support.
As the Huskers pursued Ohio that weekend, Burkhead decided to try to fire a few teammates by mentioning the boy he had just met.
“Hey, Jack wouldn’t give up,” he told them, “why should we do that?”
Burkhead rallied Nebraska to victory, scoring the winning touchdown. He developed a friendship with the Hoffman family, and a year and a half later, the Nebraska coaching team came up with the idea to put Jack in the April 2013 spring game.
The nervous boy with the oscillating helmet ran for a 69-yard touchdown in front of 60,000 fans, while Andy cheered him from the side. No one knew that the moment would catch fire, that the YouTube video of the race would generate almost 9 million views and that Jack would win an ESPY award and visit President Barack Obama.
Andy Hoffman took the opportunity to bring Jack’s team to the center of attention. He desperately wanted a cure for pediatric brain cancer so that other parents would not have to go through what he and Bri did. He wanted to tell them. One of his New Year’s resolutions in 2020 was to finally write a book; he toiled at night while his family slept and sent the manuscript in the middle of summer.
A few weeks later, he suffered a seizure during a Sunday jog, which led to a trip to the hospital and the discovery of white mass in the brain.
But he always tried to be optimistic. He signed copies of his book, “Yards After Contact,” throughout the fall and winter. He wanted to be a bestseller.
At the end of an interview with ESPN at the end of last year, while he was at the Mayo Clinic, Hoffman was asked if he had anything to add. When his son was ill, he could do medical research and raise money for cancer research. He could caress his son and young daughters.
He paused for a second, uncertain about a future over which he had no control.
“It will sound a little silly,” he said as he began to cry, “but I love my wife and children more than anything in the world.”