Prostate cancer diagnosis connects LA screenwriter to former heavyweight champ
By Tony Moton (’98)
Screenwriter
Sadly, for men in the African American community, the culturally-driven aversion to trusting doctors and health care, as well as socio-economic factors, put us at a greater risk for the disease.
The date Jan. 6, 2021, will always have a special place in my personal timeline. At roughly the same moments the Capitol Insurrection started in Washington, D.C., I was incapacitated in Los Angeles. Instead of watching the events unfold in real time, I was lying in a surgical bed at the Kaiser Permanente West LA Medical Center. The historic event that day marks my journey of undergoing robotic-assisted radical prostatectomy to remove a cancerous prostate gland. Though it was an outpatient procedure and I returned home in the early evening, I spent the next few days in discomforting post-surgical condition and was, quite frankly, oblivious to anything happening outside of my own body. When I finally was able to check out the news and my media feeds over the following weekend, I couldn’t believe what I had slept through on the operating table.
I would learn in a phone call from my doctor exactly six weeks later that my Capitol Insurrection Day procedure was successful. Results from the follow-up blood screening showed I was cancer-free. The doctor had implored that I do not try to “dodge” surgery when I initially balked at the idea out of fear in late 2020, so he confided the after-surgery pathology showed my cancer was a more aggressive form than initially diagnosed. I made the right decision at the right time. Finally, after numerous months of fear, doubt and anxiety, I could have the peace of mind I wanted. But during the month-and-a-half period when I nervously anticipated the blood test result, another bit of news served as a chilling reminder prostate cancer can claim the lives of the strongest of men if not properly diagnosed and treated.
One month after my surgery, on Feb. 5, Leon Spinks, the man who famously beat and, later, lost to Muhammad Ali in world heavyweight boxing title bouts, died in Nevada. His cause of death was related to a combination of prostate cancer, other cancers and various ailments. He was 67. As a former sportswriter who had covered a Spinks fight late in his career and profiled him for the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1986, I was no less than devastated by word of his passing. When I wrote about Spinks that year, he had traveled to the Gopher State to fight — and eventually lose to — a fairly unknown rival named Rocky Sekorski. The headline on my story was: “Tightfisted Times: Leon Spinks is older and wiser, traveling light with an eye on his money.” I vividly remember accompanying him on his three-hour layover in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport and being somewhat wide-eyed in his presence. I was 26; Leon was 33.
Out of curiosity to learn more about how prostate cancer had contributed to his death, I reached out to his widow, Brenda Glur Spinks. In a fitting twist, I learned that Brenda was a Nebraska native, and Spinks had lived with and dated his future wife in her hometown of Columbus from 2004 to 2011. I, too, have Nebraska ties, having spent nearly nine years as an entertainment and pop culture columnist at the Omaha World-Herald simultaneously earning my master’s degree in journalism/news-editorial from UNL in 1998. When reached by phone only a few weeks after her husband’s death, Brenda told me the two had met by chance in Branson, Mo., around 1999, when she was working in wardrobe for Branson’s Radio City Rockettes show at the Grand Palace Theater. “There was a country and western band playing and it was packed,” Brenda recalled. “They announced, ‘Leon Spinks has entered the building!’ and my friend who was a lot younger than me didn’t know who he was. I said, ‘I gotta go meet him.’ ”
And meet him she did, leading to a long-term relationship during which Leon (26-17-3 with 14 knockouts as a pro boxer and an Olympic gold medal to his credit) became quite the celebrity when they moved to the Husker state. “For one thing, there are not many African American people in Columbus, Nebraska,” Brenda said. “But I know he got tore down about this because he had nothing to do.” During his time there, Leon held a number of odd jobs, including serving as a school bus monitor while Brenda worked as the driver, and taking jobs as a janitor at the YMCA and McDonald’s. “We ate a lot of McDonald’s back then,” Brenda confided. “People would come in just to see him.”
But Leon, a man with a playful side and a grin to match, began suffering from numerous health problems later in life. He already had been suffering from dementia when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in June 2019. The disease spread to his bladder and bones, and his condition rapidly deteriorated, Brenda said. Like the fighter he was, Leon battled back until his cancer became terminal. The ultimate haymakers to Leon’s health might well have been inadequate treatment options, insufficient insurance and a much-too-late diagnosis of his cancer in the first place. “When he turned 65 and got regular insurance and met with the urologist and finally did the biopsy, he had the worst kind of prostate cancer you can get,” Brenda said, then fighting back tears. “A specialist told me prostate cancer in African American men is basically different from other cultures because it kills African American men faster than other people. I feel so bad for him.”
I, too, feel bad in light of how prostate cancer felled Leon Spinks. As an African American man who was 60 on the day of my cancer surgery in January, I feel supremely fortunate that my illness was discovered during a routine checkup the year before. Sadly, for men in the African American community, the culturally-driven aversion to trusting doctors and health care, as well as socio-economic factors, put us at a greater risk for the disease. We definitely need to get “woke” on this life-threatening issue. According to the American Cancer Society’s report “Cancer Facts and Figures 2021,” prostate cancer mortality of Black men is more than double that of men in every other racial-ethnic group. Dr. Andrew Christiansen, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said he would encourage Black men to get screened at the age of 45 and people without a family history of prostate cancer — and who are non-African American — to obtain a screening at age 55.
“It’s the most common cancer overall in men, and we have excellent treatment options like radiation and surgery,” Christiansen said. “The field has been able to move forward and find treatment options for patients that are better than in the ’80s and ’90s. It’s a screenable disease and a treatable disease.”
Now, every time the “Storming of the United States Capitol” gets mentioned, I get a gentle reminder about my own experience with prostate cancer, as well as that of Leon Spinks. I may have gotten punched, but I dodged a knockout. Spinks wasn’t so lucky. You can bet I’ll never sleep on that.