Former University of Cincinnati men's basketball coach Bob Huggins watched helplessly as his mother died of cancer nearly 20 years ago.
Huggins, the winningest coach in the history of the UC basketball program, drove back and forth from Cincinnati to Northeast Ohio almost daily to spend time with his ailing mother, Norma Mae.
"My mom, the whole time, would say, 'Bobby, you don't need to do this,'" Huggins said. "'You need to stay there with those young men. They need you.' It was virtually every day I got the same talk from my mother about why am I here."
On the morning of May 24, 2003, following a five-month bout with colon cancer, Norma Mae died. She was 68.
"I didn't know what to do, but I had to do something," Huggins said.
Morma Mae's death motivated Huggins to establish the Norma Mae Huggins Cancer Endowment, a memorial fund to provide cancer care and research.
"When you watch people struggle with it, unfortunately sometimes for years, it's a terrible, terrible, debilitating disease," Huggins told The Enquirer on Wednesday. "I just wanted to do something that my mom would be proud of."
For the past few years, Huggins, now the head coach at West Virginia University, has hosted a fundraising fish fry inside a Morgantown, West Virginia, warehouse that holds more than 1,500 people.
