Joe and Trevor: Your Favorite Cancer Bromance is Back!

So the first Gathering 2022, basically this crazy idea that, hey, we have this amazing community of men going through cancer, and the entire point of Man Up To Cancer is we should- we're better off, we're smarter, stronger, and better off going through this as a pack than we are as lone wolves.

Um, so we, we started, you know, the getting the community, building the community in the pandemic of 2020.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But talk, talk about, like, that first year, what it was like-

Mm-hmm

... 'cause we always wanted to get people together in person.

Um, and that, that first year was basically like, "How, how can we bring all these people together that we're meeting online actually in person to make this thing real?"

Well, I mean, you know, I came up here in October of 2020 just to meet you that first time, because I had to figure out, who is this guy? You know, and a lot of times when you meet people, when you meet people online, you really don't know them till you meet them in person.

So when I met Trevor, i- it sound- it sounded great on Zoom and, and you kinda knew him on, you kinda knew him on social media, but I think if I was gonna take a deep dive into this, I need to see if the, this person was the same, if he was the same person I would meet.

Um, and I come to f- come to find out that he was, that he was everything he was on social media as he is in person, very

It wasn't like this, like, fake guy avatar.

Right.

I, I wasn't gonna show up and he was gonna lock me in the basement or something.

[laughs] Like, I was... [laughs] You know?

Catfished you.

Catfished me, but, um, truly, uh, just a great man of integrity, a great heart, great spirit.

Um, and th- th- those talks that we had during that weekend together was really what the, the idea of the Backpack Program, the idea of, um, you know, what is now the Gathering of Wolves, but we knew these guys had been in isolation during that period, not just because of the cancer, but also because of COVID.

Right.

And there was this desire to meet together, and, um, so, and that's what we did.

I mean, luckily, gratefully for Michael Reely that he had these connections in Buffalo, New York and he c- he, we found a place.

You know, it's, it'll always be the first place.

Mm.

It'll always be very special.

I mean, it wasn't, you know, it was like, it had its, you know, the stinky pond and the-