There was the usual last-minute bustle, the usual air of expectation and the usual traffic on Buffalo Grove Road, controlled, as usual, by Buffalo Grove police donating their services to the cause.But the mood at the start of the 29th annual Chicago Bears Wives Cancer Benefit at Malnati's restaurant in Buffalo Grove was far from usual on Monday night.
The death of Bears running back Walter Payton had cast a shadow over the usually joyful event.
Jean Malnati Miller, who lost her husband, Lou, to cancer in 1978 and has since helped organize the event, had tears in her eyes.
"I don't know how I'm going to handle speaking tonight. I haven't felt like this since Brian Piccolo died," Malnati Miller said of another former Bear claimed by cancer.
The hundreds of fans who filled the restaurant and the large tent in the parking lot were subdued as they remembered Payton, who had succumbed to primary sclerosing cholangitis and bile duct cancer only a few hours before.
But the efforts of the Bears wives still could not be overlooked, as they had raised $93,000 and were donating it to cancer research.
Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Dr. Steve Rosen and Dr. Mark Talamonti accepted the check.
Talamonti, one of the leading experts in research and treatment of the kind of cancer that claimed Payton, noted that even if a transplant had been available, Payton undoubtedly would not have survived.
That type of cancer, Talamonti said, is "a not infrequent complication to the cholangitis. This is a very fast-growing cancer, one that metastasizes early and spreads to the point where it cannot be removed," he said. "The prognosis was grim."
Donations to honor the memory of Walter Payton, will continue to be accepted in the name of the Lou Malnati Cancer Fund, at Halas Hall, 1000 Football Drive, Lake Forest, IL 60045.
