By T. Scott Boatrigjht
Mike McGee, Chief Lending Officer for Louisiana National Bank, runs for life.
That’s not running for his life, but instead running to honor the life of a lost loved one.
And McGee got to make the most exciting run he’s ever made earlier this week as he competed in Monday’s Boston Marathon — all to honor his late son Will, who passed away at the age of 17 in 2002 at St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, after a seven-month battle against liver cancer.
“He was diagnosed early in 2002 and passed away that September,” McGee said. “It was just one of those things where I couldn’t let his story end there. St. Jude does so much for so many people, and selfishly, his mother (McGee’s ex-wife Ora Lea McGee), his sister (Rachel Madden) and I just wanted to carry his name on. We didn’t want to just become kind of fading in the background, so we decided to start a foundation in his honor.”
And that’s how the Willpower Foundation came to be.
“It started out as just raising money to meet the fundraiser commitment for people who wanted to go into the cooperative to meet the fundraising commitment for the St. Jude Marathon,” McGee said. “It started out with four or five runners, and now we have 30 to 40 runners and another 40 to 50 who don’t run a lick but just want to help raise money for St. Jude.
“All of it culminates in a fundraiser held each year in (the University of Louisiana-Monroe’s) Bayou Pointe. It’s all about raising money for St. Jude in honor of Will, and that’s why we’re called the Willpower Foundation.”
McGee has run what he termed “countless” marathons and multiple half-marathons before, but on Monday he took on the dream of every long distance runner — the Boston Marathon.
“From the spectator standpoint, there’s nothing that compares to it,” McGee said of running the Boston Marathon. “I’ve run the New York Marathon, and that’s considered one of the world’s majors. But Boston is probably the penultimate marathon because you have to qualify for it. And from a spectator standpoint, there’s nothing that really compares to it.
“My wife (Donna Donald McGee) is a strong runner and probably a better athlete than me. She didn’t run the marathon but probably nearly ran that distance cheering me on.”
While McGee was just amazed seeing all that was happening around him as he ran, he was just as thrilled he was competing in what is considered the king of worldwide marathons.
“You have to run a qualifying marathon, which means that it has to be a Boston-approved course, and you have to run it in a certain time based on your age,” McGee said. “For someone my age — 61 — I would have to run a qualifying marathon in three hours and 50 minutes just to be able to submit an application to run the Boston Marathon. The older you are the more time you get, but it’s still a very difficult thing to qualify for.”
But McGee didn’t need to make a qualifying time, all because he was “running for life.”
“I’ve come really close, but in all transparency I didn’t this year because I was a St. Jude’s Hero Charity Runner,” he said. “I did get really close in 2009 when I ran the Las Vegas Marathon in 3:35, and my qualifying time that year had to be 3:30 based on my age.
“That’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to truly qualifying.”
While McGee feels a need to run now, it wasn’t always that way.
“I started running after Will passed away,” McGee said. “I was not a runner in high school (McGee grew up in Greenville, Mississippi before moving to Louisiana before his senior year and graduating from West Monroe High School). In fact, I played a little college football (at Vanderbilt) and said I was never going to run again. And for many years I held true to that until Will passed away.
“But after that, running just became a form of grief therapy. I don’t know how. It’s a God thing. It was a spiritual matter where I could still connect with Will and talk to him.”
And so, McGee’s run for life began.
“It started with asking myself if I could run a 5K, then it became a 10K. Once I got that, it became can you run a half marathon?,” McGee said. “Obviously it worked up to a marathon, and the first marathon I ever completed was the St. Jude Marathon in 2007. And it all became where I don’t feel complete without running. I ran a Marathon Monday but I got back home and ran some (Thursday) just because it becomes addictive.”
Just as addictive as a parent’s love for a child.
“After all these years, it’s still simply about talking to Will,” McGee said. “As I was running 26 miles on Monday, he and I carried on a lot of conversations.”
McGee said anyone wishing to donate to the Willpower Foundation can do so online at willpoweronline.com or by searching social media for Willpower Foundation, Inc.
“What we want to do is one day shut St. Jude Hospital down, meaning that all childhood cancers can be cured,” McGee said.
