In 1998, Katie Couric lost her husband, Jay Monahan, criminal defense attorney and television legal commentator, to
colon cancer. Monahan was 41 at the time of colon cancer diagnosis, and both Katie and Jay struggled to find treatment
options. After her husband's death eight months later, Couric wanted to create a clinic the two would have appreciated
during Monahan's battle with cancer. In 2004, The Jay Monahan Center for
Gastrointestinal Health, named in his honor, opened its doors as a clinic of integrated care, focusing on
prevention, screening, treatment, support, research, and education for individuals who have or are at risk for
developing gastrointestinal cancers. "Clearly this is precisely the kind of center we wish had existed when Jay was diagnosed," Couric says. "It was very difficult to decipher the different medical jargon about treatment plans. It was a very lonely and isolating experience and very harrowing to go from one specialist to another. Having this comprehensive center full of compassionate caregivers all under one roof would have been a wonderful place for us to go. The opening was a bittersweet occasion, but the center is going to be incredibly helpful to thousands of families and what can be better than that?"
Last night, to raise funds for both Katie Couric's Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance and the Jay Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal Health, celebrities from film, television and recording donated their time and talent for Hollywood Meets Motown at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Helping to raise funds for the foundations were: Ashford & Simpson, The Bacon Brothers, Tiki Barber, Tony Bennett, Big & Rich, Chris Botti, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, LL Cool J, Elvis Costello, Rosario Dawson, Robert De Niro, Jimmy Fallon, Tina Fey, Whoopi Goldberg, Chaka Khan, Greg Kinnear, John Legend, Martina McBride, Michael McDonald, Idina Menzel, Smokey Robinson, Jordan Rudess, James Taylor, Steve Tyrell, and Vanessa Williams.
With all the fun a gala evening of good music can be, I feel certain it will always be bittersweet moments for Couric, who now works with so much dedication to easing the struggles cancer patients must endure, and ultimately, preventing others from losing the love of their life to the cruelty of cancer, as she did.
In 1998, Katie Couric lost her husband,
Jay Monahan, in the prime of his life, to colon cancer. Since then, Couric has been a passionate crusader in raising
public awareness about colon cancer and in stressing the vital importance of colon cancer screening for everyone over
40 years of age. "Jay was just 41 when he was diagnosed, and it would have taken a very astute doctor to pick up
on it being colorectal cancer early on," says Couric. "He was pretty much asymptomatic. He had no family
history. You can be feeling perfectly fine – on top of the world physically – and still have colorectal
cancer. One of the many difficult things about this disease is you often have no symptoms. You may not have blood in
your stool, or have lost weight or your bowels habits may not have changed. But you could still have the disease."
