Length-47 minutes, 30 seconds
Dr. Kevin Keough, host of the North Star Guardians podcast, interviews Mr. Jack Willis, author of Saving Jack: A Man's Struggle With Breast Cancer published by the University of Oklahoma Press.
Breast cancer gave Jack Willis a reason to write his first book — a unique
story about a man with a disease usually associated with women. Saving Jack
would be one of the first books, if not the first, written by a man with breast cancer. Willis kept a journal during treatments, and that prompted the idea for the book. He had worked at the Muskogee Daily Phoenix
in Muskogee, Oklahoma, for nineteen years, fifteen as editor, so writing was nothing new. But he’d never created anything longer than a sixty-inch newspaper article. “Take it one chapter at a time,” his book
editor told him. So he did, and a new career as an author was launched.
Willis retired in June 2007 as Editorial Adviser of The Oklahoma Daily and Adjunct Journalism Professor at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. His students had covered the Oklahoma City bombing. They had
tracked Zacarias Moussaoui, the man suspected of being the twentieth hijacker in the 9/11 attack. And they had revealed how the OU athletics department was operating millions of dollars in the red before a new
coach resurrected the Sooners football program. Saying goodbye to those students and that exciting lifestyle wasn’t easy. It’s never easy to give up something you love. Educating through the newspaper and
teaching gave him satisfaction and purpose, and college students kept him young.
Willis is a member of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, and in February 2006 was recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists, Oklahoma Pro Chapter, with its inaugural “Teacher of the Year” award. College Media Advisers named him its national adviser of the year (with less than five years experience) in 1995. He taught journalism part-time at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, for eight years while working at the Phoenix.
He received his bachelor’s degree in advertising in 1963 and his
master’s degree in journalism management in 1968 from Oklahoma State
University. Willis lives the good life with his wife Becky in Norman.
Visit his website.
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