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Join us for a night of drinks & cheeseburgers to celebrate the life of Jimmy Buffett featuring music from the Parrots of the Caribbean Tribute Band!
I remember clearly the first time I heard a Jimmy Buffett song. It was 1980, I was a freshman at Purdue University and I was trying to go to sleep. From about midnight to 3 a.m., really loud music blared from the room across the hall with a group of seniors screaming, “I don’t know where I’m a-gonna go when the volcano blows!” It’s only a 3:35 minute song, but they managed to play “Volcano” over and over for three hours, and that somehow started a 40+ year connection for me to Jimmy Buffett. That song became personal.
I saw him play for the first time live at Purdue in 1983. My memory says that there was no Coral Reefer Band at the time. It was just Jimmy and his guitar. I remember he pulled a student up on stage who claimed he could play one of the songs with him and he did. That was cool.
Over the years I saw him play wherever I was – California, Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, Buckeye Lake, Paris (France) and Red Rocks in Colorado. It was and always will be the music that transports me from whatever mood I am in to a better one, a happier one. I became a fan.
About two years ago during a routine physical that I had been putting off for years, I found out that I had prostate cancer. I had no symptoms other than elevated PSA levels. This just could not be! But it was and life became a bit of a blur.
Fortunately, I was guided to The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) by a close friend who had received similar news a few months before me. I had done the normal scans, but The James offered a relatively new PET scan specifically for prostate cancer detection which indicated that the cancer had already spread to my lymph nodes. So things became more complicated than I had hoped, but I was grateful that the scope of the cancer was not missed. My 30 days of radiation treatment were scheduled for November 2022 followed by hormone therapy through May of 2024.
Somewhere in the middle of this blur, Jimmy Buffett died of a rare form of skin cancer and it became personal. I was not ready to hear that someone with such a passion for life and love for the world could be a target for cancer. I put “Volcano” on the car stereo and played it LOUD over and over until I convinced myself that’s what Jimmy Buffett would do and I could carry on. And I did. As of now all looks good. Thank you to every kind and talented team member at The James!
It has only been a year since Jimmy Buffett died and I miss him. I wanted to create a celebration with his music and try to recreate the concert environment that I shared over the years with good friends and family as a tribute to the joy he brought the world and me.
To honor Jimmy and to honor the wonderful team at The James, please make your gift today. All gifts will support the Melanoma and Skin Cancer Research Fund at the OSUCCC – James.
"Breathe in, Breathe out, Move on" - JB
Steve Peale
