Leaving a Legacy for Victory Over Cancer®
Inspired by Jim Valvano and Motivated by a Personal Diagnosis, the Glover and Frazier Families are Supporting Game-Changing Research
The Glover family, J.M. Glover, son Matt Glover and his wife Susan, and their daughter Catherine and her husband Eli, are no strangers to Jim Valvano’s story.
Longtime NC State fans and filled with alumni (Matt, Catherine and Eli, as well as Matt’s other daughter Anna and her husband, Matthew), the family knows Jim from his tenure in Raleigh as the NC State men’s basketball coach. He brought excitement, charisma and championships to the team. But, even more so, they have been impacted by his legacy through the V Foundation for Cancer Research.
They’ve taken the impact and legacy of Jim Valvano to heart, with the aim of leaving a legacy of their own that can help others well into the future.
“I feel like our family is similar to Jim Valvano in a way, not that we have won a national championship or we have found Victory Over Cancer® in our current situation, but our goal as a family and as a company at Glover Construction., through the Glover Construction 12:48 Fund, from my grandad to my mom and dad to my husband and I, is to leave a legacy [like] he has left,” Catherine said.
Like many families, the Glover family knew people who were battling or who had fought cancer, including within their business and circle of friends, but unfortunately, the mission of the V Foundation became personal to the Glover family in 2024.
Eli and Catherine were ecstatic to be new parents, welcoming their son, Barrett, in December of 2023. Just a few months later, however, in the midst of caring for a newborn, lacking sleep and adjusting to a new routine, Eli noticed a lump on his neck. He had a feeling something wasn’t quite right, so he went to the doctor. The doctors did a needle biopsy, and after waiting on results, Eli was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“Cancer is a shock to any family, but in our situation, especially at 30 years old and with a newborn… We’ve [been] given the blessing of starting a family and got hit like a train with this cancer diagnosis,” Catherine said.
Eli quickly was ushered into treatment, beginning with six rounds of chemotherapy in the spring and finishing in early November. Because of cancer research in the past, his doctors utilized a combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy, allowing him to have a little bit of an easier time with the treatment.
While Eli has been battling the disease, his doctors have remained positive and reassuring. When he was diagnosed, the doctors gave a simple message to begin Eli’s journey.
“He said, ‘I want y’all to hear me: You are not going to miss seeing your child grow up. You are not going to miss graduation.’ So, from that perspective, now we just fight,” Catherine said.
Even with the newer, gentler treatment options and the doctor’s reassurance, the journey wasn’t easy. Catherine described it as, “We can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’ll start to get closer and closer and then with one treatment, one blood test or one scan, it can feel like the tunnel is shrinking in on us and we can’t see anything again.”
As Jim Valvano said on stage at the 1993 ESPYS, “Don’t Give Up . . . Don’t Ever Give Up!”® This motto for the V Foundation has been adopted by Eli and Catherine throughout Eli’s cancer journey.
“Our take on never giving up is not giving up because of our family. We’re not going to give up because I’m not going to leave Catherine a widow. I’m not going to leave Barrett without a father. This is just our new reality, but it’s a temporary reality at this point. Our goal is to, as Jimmy V said, never give up and get through this.”
Eli is set to have scans in January of 2025 to determine the next steps. Hopefully, their ‘temporary reality’ will soon become a stage of remission. Or, it might mean more treatment. But, regardless of what the next steps are, they’ll keep fighting and will never give up. And they’ll celebrate their victories in the future while helping others, too.
“For us, that victory looks like the next chapter in our life,” Catherine said. “Cancer was reality now. How do we live on the flip side of that when you’re back on the mountaintop instead of in the valley? In our case, it’s doing things like supporting the V Foundation and supporting other people who are diagnosed in the future,” Catherine said. “It’s saying, ‘Look, I know it feels like the tunnel is shrinking in on you and your world feels like it’s crashing down and you don’t know what’s going to happen, but we want to be an encouragement to you.’”
Because of their recent personal experience, their admiration of Jim Valvano and the V Foundation’s mission of funding game-changing research, Catherine and Eli Frazier, Matt and Susan Glover, J.M. Glover and their multi-generation, family business, Glover Construction Co., Inc., through The Glover Construction 12:48 Fund all came together to support the funding of a pediatric cancer research grant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
The grant, awarded to Mireya Velasquez, M.D., through the Dick Vitale Pediatric Cancer Research Fund, is focused on improving treatment options for children faced with blood cancers, such as lymphoblastic leukemia and lymphoblastic lymphoma. Dr. Velasquez is a pediatric hematologist-oncologist, and the grant felt like the perfect fit to support because of its relevance to the family – passionate about helping children, connection to Jim Valvano, and honoring Eli during his battle with blood cancer.
The Glover family has made an impact on cancer research today that will have a lifesaving impact in the future. And they won’t give up until we achieve Victory Over Cancer®.
