From OnlineAthens.com
July 31st, 2016 11:41 PM
Kirby Smart answered questions about football for hours at Southeastern Conference Media Days in Hoover, Ala., in July.
Reporters, as they have since Smart was hired in December, worked to find out how aspects of his Georgia Bulldogs program are operating and how games might unfold this fall.
Amid the frenzy, a woman approached for another common exchange.
“You’re Karl’s brother,” she said. “I was a counselor with him at Camp Sunshine.”
“They know him everywhere,” Kirby said.
'NOT A PLEASANT MEMORY'
At 15, Karl Smart was fresh off a growth spurt. A freshman at Bainbridge High in 1989, he played football, swam and flashed an artistic side, too. Karl could sing and always said he was going to be a world traveler and live out of a Volkswagen van.
Karl was the eldest, Kirby a year younger was eager to join his brother on the football field and sister Kendall was 8.
Their dad Sonny was the football coach at Bainbridge, a small Southwest Georgia town about 15 miles north of the Florida state line, and their mother Sharon was a school teacher.
Karl was “the class clown, the heart throb, he was just really popular all the way throughout growing up,” Kirby said.
That fall, Karl began to feel different. He couldn’t keep up during drills at football practice. He often felt light-headed.
At first, the family thought he had mono. A doctor sent Karl’s blood to be tested.
The Smarts were at the football field when the results came in. Sonny approached baseball coach Stan Killough and said Karl had to immediately go to the hospital in Tallahassee and that Kirby and Kendall needed a place to stay for the night.
“Kirby was still a young guy and I’m certain there was a lot he didn’t understand,” Killough said.
Late that night, Kirby’s concern peaked. “I want to talk to my dad,” he said to Killough.
This was before cell phones, so it took time to reach Sonny at the hospital.
“It's not a pleasant memory,” Sonny said.
Karl had acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
“I just remember my mom started crying,” Karl said. “That's when I knew that was a serious thing.”
Sonny and Sharon returned home and picked up Kirby and Kendall.
“We just sat down and told them as honestly as we could what was going on,” Sonny said.
The kids didn’t understand. Am I going to get this? What causes this? Is Karl going to die? There were more questions than answers.
“The only thing I had ever heard of was Lou Gehrig’s Disease because I followed baseball,” Kirby said. “I had no clue what any of that was. I just wanted to know if he was going to make it or not. We didn't really know.”
RIGOROUS TREATMENT
The first part of treatment, induction therapy, called for Karl to be constantly slammed with chemo at Egleston (now Children’s Healthcare) in Atlanta for a month.
Each weekend stay lasted 36 to 72 hours.
Sonny continued coaching, so Sharon and Karl drove to each session. As soon as games ended on Friday night, Sonny drove four hours north and remained until late on Sundays.
“You just do what you have to do,” Sonny said. “We just made it happen.”
Karl went into remission within four weeks, but treatment sessions came regularly for the next three-and-a-half years. Treatment was first come, first serve, so Sharon would wake Karl up at 2 a.m. to begin each trip to get in line. They waited in the parking lot at the outpatient clinic until they could go in. Sometimes it was for intrathecal chemotherapy, where drugs are injected into the fluid-filled space between tissue that covers the brain and spinal cord. Other times it was for a bone marrow biopsy, a procedure to gather samples for testing.
“It was survival,” Sonny said.
Twice, Karl’s survival was in doubt.
Shortly after Karl went into remission, he had a reaction to medication that caused pancreatitis and diabetes.
Karl spent three days in intensive care and three weeks in the hospital.
“We thought we would lose him,” Sonny said.
Two years later, Karl explored a cave with friends and came in contact with areas inhabited by bats. Karl’s weakened immune system was no match for a fungal infection that developed, causing him to drop to 110 pounds. He spent a month in the hospital as doctors tried to treat him.
“I never saw weakness in him,” Kirby said. “There was never a time that I didn't think he wasn't going to beat it.”
CAMP INTRODUCTION
During nearly every hospital trip, doctors, nurses and patients told Karl where he needed to go.
Camp Sunshine, they all said, would help every aspect of his life and fight with cancer.
“It was almost like a cult,” Karl said.
The organization began as a camp for kids with cancer in 1982 and by the time Karl was diagnosed, there were two five-day sessions each summer, trips coordinated across the country and programs to help educate affected parents and siblings.
Karl joined a group that he says enjoyed, “the red carpet treatment,” on a trip to Washington D.C. in the spring of ’90.
“We had our own private bus,” he said. “We would pull up to a place and they would undo the ropes and let us through. It was great because we were a lot of sick kids.”
Sally Hale, now executive director of Camp Sunshine, cornered Karl outside the Smithsonian about attending summer camp.
“He was one of those kids that just enjoyed being around other kids and having fun,” Hale said. “He just has a very positive spirit.”
Karl agreed to come.
“I just really got hooked,” he said.
Karl attended camp the next three summers, where he found kids with cancer who had similar concerns and hobbies and issues and interests. Kids weren’t afraid to be seen without their wigs or without their prosthetic limbs. Kids were OK being themselves.
“There’s this culture of acceptance and love that is hard to explain,” Karl said. “Once people get connected to it they really don't leave.”
Karl was like a magnet for other campers. He was funny and everybody clung to him, according to fellow early ’90s camper Sissy Clayton McLaughlin.
“He was easy on the eyes, too,” she said.
Consumed with the camp and culture, Karl was selected for an outbound leadership trip to Colorado that “had a profound effect on his attitude and outlook on life for being able get through the treatments and the real hard times,” according to Sonny.
Time was spent camping, hiking and rock climbing. Other than the D.C. trip, Karl had never really been outside of Georgia and Alabama. In Colorado, with eight other teenagers recovering from cancer, a nurse and a counselor, he set up campsites and carried his own backpack.
“It gives them this ability to really understand that even though this thing cancer has happened to them they are still able to regain what they’ve lost and they become a leader amongst their peers and then also out in the community,” Tenise Newberg, a cancer survivor and Camp Sunshine program director, said.
After 3 1/2 years of treatment and ups and downs, Karl kicked cancer for good during his senior year of high school.
Being alive and no longer in need of chemo was great, but “Karl talks more about the friends he lost,” Kirby said.
“I think there’s a certain kind of bravado about beating cancer,” Karl said, “but I had many friends who were a lot tougher and died.”
Karl carried that appreciation with him to Georgia Tech for a year and then to the University of Colorado to finish his degree. He moved to the West Coast, first to Portland and then to San Francisco before eventually settling near the Bay Area with his wife Halo. Each summer he came back to Camp Sunshine. He worked as a lifeguard. He led mountain biking adventures. He became a counselor during the teenage week of summer camp.
“I think he realized who he could and couldn’t push to get to where they needed to be because he was one of those kids who a counselor might have pushed to get him somewhere,” Newberg said. “He learned that from his counselors and he committed to carry that on.”
A generation of campers became volunteers and counselors. Karl gave up being a counselor when he started a family (he now has two children), but his influence at the camp lives on.
“Not only was he a great inspiration to these kids but the volunteers here all admire him,” Hale said. “They know his journey, they know what he gave back. I always know that if Karl is coming in he's going to have those big arms to give you a big hug and be so upbeat and positive. That's just an energy that people want to be around.”
'KARL'S THE SUPERSTAR'
Karl’s phone lit up in mid-June.
Kirby and his players were at Camp Sunshine, making the annual trip to visit campers and tour the facility.
“I got about a million texts sending me pictures of Kirby and sending jokes back and forth,” Karl said.
The Bulldogs have made trips to Camp Sunshine, now held each summer in Rutledge, since the Vince Dooley Era. Ray Goff and then years later Mark Richt continued the tradition.
Kirby made an appearance when he was on Richt’s staff and a few other times to see Karl. His visit in June came with a twist – most people referred to him as “Karl’s brother” instead of “Bulldogs coach.”
“Karl’s the superstar,” Hale said.
Kirby met with kids, toured the arts and crafts cabin and the radio station and watched star running back Nick Chubb play dodgeball with campers.
Kirby also told Karl’s story to everybody he could.
“It’s so much more meaningful than what I do,” Kirby said later. “I touch lives but mine are not in danger. They’re healthy athletic bodies, and Karl’s out there really affecting people that are going through a tough time. I’m sure he’s an inspiration for so many because he made it through it and now he’s got his own family and that’s something that a lot of people aspire to do.”
These days, Karl works with people who went through what he did. He consults with patients dealing with the stress of hospitalization and others with brain trauma and mental illness.
He also trains and competes in various duathlon and triathlon races.
“It is nice to be alive and to stay fit and it helps with the stress,” Karl said.
For the Fourth of July, the entire Smart family gathered at Kirby’s house on Lake Oconee, 50 miles south of Athens and 30 miles east of Camp Sunshine.
That’s become a tradition.
“We all rally around,” Karl said. “I would say it's just like old times, but it's better than old times."
...READ MORE HERE...
July 31st, 2016 11:41 PM
Kirby Smart answered questions about football for hours at Southeastern Conference Media Days in Hoover, Ala., in July.
Reporters, as they have since Smart was hired in December, worked to find out how aspects of his Georgia Bulldogs program are operating and how games might unfold this fall.
Amid the frenzy, a woman approached for another common exchange.
“You’re Karl’s brother,” she said. “I was a counselor with him at Camp Sunshine.”
“They know him everywhere,” Kirby said.
'NOT A PLEASANT MEMORY'
At 15, Karl Smart was fresh off a growth spurt. A freshman at Bainbridge High in 1989, he played football, swam and flashed an artistic side, too. Karl could sing and always said he was going to be a world traveler and live out of a Volkswagen van.
Karl was the eldest, Kirby a year younger was eager to join his brother on the football field and sister Kendall was 8.
Their dad Sonny was the football coach at Bainbridge, a small Southwest Georgia town about 15 miles north of the Florida state line, and their mother Sharon was a school teacher.
Karl was “the class clown, the heart throb, he was just really popular all the way throughout growing up,” Kirby said.
That fall, Karl began to feel different. He couldn’t keep up during drills at football practice. He often felt light-headed.
At first, the family thought he had mono. A doctor sent Karl’s blood to be tested.
The Smarts were at the football field when the results came in. Sonny approached baseball coach Stan Killough and said Karl had to immediately go to the hospital in Tallahassee and that Kirby and Kendall needed a place to stay for the night.
“Kirby was still a young guy and I’m certain there was a lot he didn’t understand,” Killough said.
Late that night, Kirby’s concern peaked. “I want to talk to my dad,” he said to Killough.
This was before cell phones, so it took time to reach Sonny at the hospital.
“It's not a pleasant memory,” Sonny said.
Karl had acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
“I just remember my mom started crying,” Karl said. “That's when I knew that was a serious thing.”
Sonny and Sharon returned home and picked up Kirby and Kendall.
“We just sat down and told them as honestly as we could what was going on,” Sonny said.
The kids didn’t understand. Am I going to get this? What causes this? Is Karl going to die? There were more questions than answers.
“The only thing I had ever heard of was Lou Gehrig’s Disease because I followed baseball,” Kirby said. “I had no clue what any of that was. I just wanted to know if he was going to make it or not. We didn't really know.”
RIGOROUS TREATMENT
The first part of treatment, induction therapy, called for Karl to be constantly slammed with chemo at Egleston (now Children’s Healthcare) in Atlanta for a month.
Each weekend stay lasted 36 to 72 hours.
Sonny continued coaching, so Sharon and Karl drove to each session. As soon as games ended on Friday night, Sonny drove four hours north and remained until late on Sundays.
“You just do what you have to do,” Sonny said. “We just made it happen.”
Karl went into remission within four weeks, but treatment sessions came regularly for the next three-and-a-half years. Treatment was first come, first serve, so Sharon would wake Karl up at 2 a.m. to begin each trip to get in line. They waited in the parking lot at the outpatient clinic until they could go in. Sometimes it was for intrathecal chemotherapy, where drugs are injected into the fluid-filled space between tissue that covers the brain and spinal cord. Other times it was for a bone marrow biopsy, a procedure to gather samples for testing.
“It was survival,” Sonny said.
Twice, Karl’s survival was in doubt.
Shortly after Karl went into remission, he had a reaction to medication that caused pancreatitis and diabetes.
Karl spent three days in intensive care and three weeks in the hospital.
“We thought we would lose him,” Sonny said.
Two years later, Karl explored a cave with friends and came in contact with areas inhabited by bats. Karl’s weakened immune system was no match for a fungal infection that developed, causing him to drop to 110 pounds. He spent a month in the hospital as doctors tried to treat him.
“I never saw weakness in him,” Kirby said. “There was never a time that I didn't think he wasn't going to beat it.”
CAMP INTRODUCTION
During nearly every hospital trip, doctors, nurses and patients told Karl where he needed to go.
Camp Sunshine, they all said, would help every aspect of his life and fight with cancer.
“It was almost like a cult,” Karl said.
The organization began as a camp for kids with cancer in 1982 and by the time Karl was diagnosed, there were two five-day sessions each summer, trips coordinated across the country and programs to help educate affected parents and siblings.
Karl joined a group that he says enjoyed, “the red carpet treatment,” on a trip to Washington D.C. in the spring of ’90.
“We had our own private bus,” he said. “We would pull up to a place and they would undo the ropes and let us through. It was great because we were a lot of sick kids.”
Sally Hale, now executive director of Camp Sunshine, cornered Karl outside the Smithsonian about attending summer camp.
“He was one of those kids that just enjoyed being around other kids and having fun,” Hale said. “He just has a very positive spirit.”
Karl agreed to come.
“I just really got hooked,” he said.
Karl attended camp the next three summers, where he found kids with cancer who had similar concerns and hobbies and issues and interests. Kids weren’t afraid to be seen without their wigs or without their prosthetic limbs. Kids were OK being themselves.
“There’s this culture of acceptance and love that is hard to explain,” Karl said. “Once people get connected to it they really don't leave.”
Karl was like a magnet for other campers. He was funny and everybody clung to him, according to fellow early ’90s camper Sissy Clayton McLaughlin.
“He was easy on the eyes, too,” she said.
Consumed with the camp and culture, Karl was selected for an outbound leadership trip to Colorado that “had a profound effect on his attitude and outlook on life for being able get through the treatments and the real hard times,” according to Sonny.
Time was spent camping, hiking and rock climbing. Other than the D.C. trip, Karl had never really been outside of Georgia and Alabama. In Colorado, with eight other teenagers recovering from cancer, a nurse and a counselor, he set up campsites and carried his own backpack.
“It gives them this ability to really understand that even though this thing cancer has happened to them they are still able to regain what they’ve lost and they become a leader amongst their peers and then also out in the community,” Tenise Newberg, a cancer survivor and Camp Sunshine program director, said.
After 3 1/2 years of treatment and ups and downs, Karl kicked cancer for good during his senior year of high school.
Being alive and no longer in need of chemo was great, but “Karl talks more about the friends he lost,” Kirby said.
“I think there’s a certain kind of bravado about beating cancer,” Karl said, “but I had many friends who were a lot tougher and died.”
Karl carried that appreciation with him to Georgia Tech for a year and then to the University of Colorado to finish his degree. He moved to the West Coast, first to Portland and then to San Francisco before eventually settling near the Bay Area with his wife Halo. Each summer he came back to Camp Sunshine. He worked as a lifeguard. He led mountain biking adventures. He became a counselor during the teenage week of summer camp.
“I think he realized who he could and couldn’t push to get to where they needed to be because he was one of those kids who a counselor might have pushed to get him somewhere,” Newberg said. “He learned that from his counselors and he committed to carry that on.”
A generation of campers became volunteers and counselors. Karl gave up being a counselor when he started a family (he now has two children), but his influence at the camp lives on.
“Not only was he a great inspiration to these kids but the volunteers here all admire him,” Hale said. “They know his journey, they know what he gave back. I always know that if Karl is coming in he's going to have those big arms to give you a big hug and be so upbeat and positive. That's just an energy that people want to be around.”
'KARL'S THE SUPERSTAR'
Karl’s phone lit up in mid-June.
Kirby and his players were at Camp Sunshine, making the annual trip to visit campers and tour the facility.
“I got about a million texts sending me pictures of Kirby and sending jokes back and forth,” Karl said.
The Bulldogs have made trips to Camp Sunshine, now held each summer in Rutledge, since the Vince Dooley Era. Ray Goff and then years later Mark Richt continued the tradition.
Kirby made an appearance when he was on Richt’s staff and a few other times to see Karl. His visit in June came with a twist – most people referred to him as “Karl’s brother” instead of “Bulldogs coach.”
“Karl’s the superstar,” Hale said.
Kirby met with kids, toured the arts and crafts cabin and the radio station and watched star running back Nick Chubb play dodgeball with campers.
Kirby also told Karl’s story to everybody he could.
“It’s so much more meaningful than what I do,” Kirby said later. “I touch lives but mine are not in danger. They’re healthy athletic bodies, and Karl’s out there really affecting people that are going through a tough time. I’m sure he’s an inspiration for so many because he made it through it and now he’s got his own family and that’s something that a lot of people aspire to do.”
These days, Karl works with people who went through what he did. He consults with patients dealing with the stress of hospitalization and others with brain trauma and mental illness.
He also trains and competes in various duathlon and triathlon races.
“It is nice to be alive and to stay fit and it helps with the stress,” Karl said.
For the Fourth of July, the entire Smart family gathered at Kirby’s house on Lake Oconee, 50 miles south of Athens and 30 miles east of Camp Sunshine.
That’s become a tradition.
“We all rally around,” Karl said. “I would say it's just like old times, but it's better than old times."
...READ MORE HERE...