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Gail Molk looked back, watching her 12-year-old
son prepare to play the final game of his seventh-
grade season in the Lemont youth football league.
It was the last game Gail.would see.
After battling breast cancer for 12 years, the can-
cer had spread to her brain in the fourth relapse.
Years of off-and-on chemotherapy had sapped her
strength and left her bald. She wasn't wearing a wig
that November day at the football field.
"The whole game, all I could do was turn around
and look at my mom," Dave said 10 years later, blink-
ing back tears. "It was so scary. The cancer was fully
in effect. That was right near the end of the season,
when it was the worst."
Late in the game, Dave's team rumbled down to
the five-yard line.
"Molk," coach Jeff Christiansen barked. "You're
in at tailback. Go ahead and score."
For the two-way lineman, this was a first. He
lined up four yards behind the quarterback and took
the first-down handoff - stuffed. Second down -
stuffed.

A

By Stephen J. Nesbitt 7/ Daily Sports Editor
With the early strains
of The Star-Spangled Banner hanging in
the brisk autumn air, Dave Molk glanced
over his shoulder. His mother and father
were settling into lawn chairs on the
grassy hill next to the Lemont High
School football field.

On third down, Dave knocked straight through
the line and fell into the endzone.
Without a second thought, he picked himself up
and kept running. He ran through the gate at the
back of the endzone, around the cement sidewalk
and all the way up the hill. Glassy-eyed, he handed
the football to his mother.
"This is for you, Mom."
Gail never let that football go.
A month later, Dave and his older brother Steve
gathered around their mother in the family room as
her life left her.
Tom Molk, their father, sat alongside his wife.
As a family, they didn't want Gail to pass away in
the hospital. They'd conceded that the cancer had
finally won, but they wouldn't let it dictate how she
would leave them.
On December 12, 2001- three days before Dave's
13th birthday - Gail passed away in the Molk fam-
ily room, surrounded by her boys and husband.
TheMichiganDaily - www.michigandaily.com j 5.

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4 1 FootballSaturday - October 29, 2011