Andy Hoffman, the father of Nebraska Cornhuskers fan and brain cancer patient Jack Hoffman, died Monday at his home in Atkinson, Nebraska. He was 42.
The Team Jack Foundation announced his death.
Andy Hoffman, a lawyer, spent the last decade of his life raising more than $ 8 million for Team Jack, a fundraising juggernaut to end childhood brain cancer, only to succumb to brain cancer himself. His July 2020 diagnosis seemed inscrutable that two people from the same family could have brain cancer; that Andy, who ran marathons 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 terrible disease,” his wife Bri wrote in a Facebook post last week. “Although Andy’s diagnosis was 7 months ago, we still deny that this is happening.”
Hoffman sought second and third opinions and gathered from two strokes to get home from the Mayo Clinic early last fall. He had two missions: raise as much money as possible for Team Jack and spend every second he had with Bri, Jack and his daughters, Ava and Reese.
They went to field games and basketball games and went hunting. Andy, an avid Nebraska football fan who put Jack in a Cornhuskers onesie when he was a baby, could watch his son play his freshman football season at Atkinson West Holt High. Jack is now 15 and is part of a clinical trial that has prevented his tumor from growing. He’s a lineman, just like his father was in high school.
When Andy Hoffman’s condition deteriorated, Jack came home from school to take care of his father. In early February 2021, Andy contracted COVID-19 and, according to Bri’s Facebook post, “he quickly got a monoclonal antibody fusion and did great. He recovered and had no symptoms after about day 5”. But an MRI taken shortly after he recovered from COVID-19 revealed that his cancer had spread and Andy’s health was deteriorating rapidly.
The battle against cancer began in 2011, when Jack was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor at the age of 5. Boston who could extract more than 90% of the tumor.
Before Jack had surgery, Andy reached out to Nebraska in the hope that Jack could meet his favorite player, who ran back to Rex Burkhead. Andy wasn’t expecting to hear back, but Burkhead, now with the New England Patriots, was thankfully obliged to meet them for lunch. He took them on a tour of Lincoln’s Memorial Stadium and called them on the Friday before Jack’s surgery to provide support.
When the Huskers chased Ohio State that weekend, Burkhead decided to try to set fire to some of his teammates by naming the boy he’d just met.
“Hey, Jack wouldn’t give up,” he told them, “so why should we?”
Burkhead took Nebraska to victory and scored the winning touchdown. He developed a friendship with the Hoffman family, and a year and a half later, the Nebraska coaching staff came up with the idea of putting Jack in the April 2013 spring game.
The nervous little boy in the wobbly helmet ran for a 69-meter touchdown in front of 60,000 fans while Andy cheered him on from the sidelines. No one knew that the moment would catch fire, that the YouTube video of the run would generate nearly 9 million views, and that Jack would win an ESPY award and visit President Barack Obama.
Andy Hoffman took the opportunity to put Team Jack in the spotlight. He desperately wanted a cure for childhood brain cancer so that other parents wouldn’t have to go through what he and Bri were doing. He wanted to tell their story. One of his New Year’s resolutions for 2020 was to finally write a book; he toiled at night while his family slept and pressed the mailbox for the manuscript in the middle of summer.
A few weeks later, he had a seizure while jogging on Sunday, which led to the trip to the hospital and the discovery of the white matter in his brain.
But he always tried to stay optimistic. He signed copies of his book “Yards After Contact” throughout the fall and winter. He wanted it to be a bestseller.
At the end of an interview with ESPN late last year, while at the Mayo Clinic, Hoffman was asked if he had anything to add. When his son was ill, he was able to examine doctors and raise money for cancer research. He could comfort his son and his young daughters.
He paused, unsure of a future beyond his control.
“This will sound a bit strange,” he said as he began to cry, “but I love my wife and children more than anything in the world.”