Leroy Sievers: Journalist, ‘My Cancer’ Blogger Dies

August 17th, 2008 Written by: Liana Aghajanian· 1 Comment

Leroy Sievers, a veteran journalist who chronicled his battle with cancer on a blog and weekly podcasts on NPR died on Friday, August 15. Sievers had covered wars, genocides and natural disasters in more than a dozen countries, reports NPR. He worked on ABC News’ Nightline for 14 years and was responsible for “The Fallen” Nightline’s 2004 tribute to those who had died during the Iraq war. He also was a guest lecturer at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication. In the last 2 years however, he became significantly known for “My Cancer” a blog and podcast with a huge following, in which Sievers chronicled his life with colon cancer. NPR has an incredible obituary about Sievers up on their site, but for now, I bring you one of his blog posts from last month. The entire blog is worth a read and you can tell by the amount of comments on the post written about his passing how much he meant to everyone who was (and wasn’t) experiencing the same battle that he was.

There’s a very touchy subject that we’re going to have to deal with eventually.

We can’t ignore it forever.

What would we do with the blog when I can’t do it any longer?

Should we find someone else to write it each day?

That could be a little difficult. I can see the job posting now. WANTED. BLOGGER. MUST HAVE CANCER.

I don’t think we could do that.

On the other hand, could the blog be written by someone who doesn’t have cancer? I don’t think so.

Unfortunately, I think these pages need to be filled by someone who has looked the beast in the eye.

I may be able to go on writing the blog every day for years or at least months. I don’t know.

I have no idea how I will ever be able to say farewell to all of you if and when that time comes, so I’m not going to think about that at all.

Photo via NPR

1 response so far ↓

1 writepudding » Quote of the Week: Leroy Sievers // Aug 21, 2008 at 3:01 pm

[...] the entry where news came of his passing (1258) he will be truly missed. I wrote a post about it on LA Cityzine last week, but here I have included one of his [...]