Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow: Meeting the Challenge of Our Multicultural America & Beyond Multicultural Stew - & - Mexican and Cuban Cultures (from pages 22-25)

No matter our age, ethnic roots, or the environment in which we were raised, each of us has an opportunity to make this a better world for all.

On Halloween in 1992, 16-year-old Jorge Mora of Pueblo, Colorado, dressed as his mother's patron saint, St. Joseph, and gave the first of his annual Halloween parties for 60 members of Dream Weavers, a Pueblo-based organization similar to Make-A-Wish Foundation. Each member of the organization has some degree of terminal illness.

On his own, Jorge received donations from businesses and organizations for the party's games, prizes, pizza, and soda. Jorge, too, is a member of Dream Weavers.

Articles about Jorge's personal efforts to improve the world appeared in Vista in April 1993, First Opportunity, Direct Aim and College Preview. In the summer of 1993, Jorge Mora participated in World Youth Day in Denver. There, he met and received communion from the pope. Once again, he received media attention after Jorge ran to the pope and received a hug.

Brain tumors are nasty business. Football great Lyle Alzado of the Los Angeles Raiders developed one, an ironic fatal result of steroids he took to enhance his booming career. But being faced with death comes even harder when you're 15-year-old Jorge Mora who has always been passionate about football and even more passionate about staying number one in his class.

"Jorge has a brain tumor!"

The words rang through his parents' minds.

No small job of fumbling for the ball on the field before Jorge or one of his high school junior varsity football teammates got it and started running that last ten yards to score a touchdown. This time the opposing team was Medulloblastoma, an aggressive cancerous tumor. Jorge needed this touchdown to save his life.

Less than four months before the doctors gave Jorge and his parents those bone-chilling words, Jorge had celebrated his birthday and had been accepted as an eager participant in Arizona State University's Center for Academic Precocity (ASU/CAP). Identified as a gifted student at home in Pueblo, Colorado, he looked forward to his first time in a summer school and the challenges at Arizona State University (ASU).

"If I took grade level subjects (at home, through his first year in high school), the classes were a bore," he said.

At the ASU/CAP program, Jorge made a wealth of friends, gifted students like him, who felt the same desire to achieve. Stimulated by the ASU/CAP program's course work and perhaps excited by competition with his newly found friends, he finished the summer session with an A in intermediate algebra and trigonometry pre-calculus studies and a B in vocabulary development.

The non-graded school survival workshop taught him to achieve his goals by focusing on his hopes for the future. He knew his time had been well invested.

But in October 1991, Jorge discovered his future might be much more limited than most boys his age even dream of considering, and he was angry. As a sophomore at South High School, he had the world at his feet and had become involved in many extracurricular activities, including swimming and of course--football, all while maintaining his number one standing in his class of 305.

"I found out (about the brain tumor) while I was in the hospital," said Jorge. "They were pretty honest about it. I knew I couldn't do without surgery. It was either do or die."

From Parkview Hospital in Pueblo, he went to Denver Children's Hospital for the surgery. Relatives from all over the Southwest brought baseball caps when they came to visit, a gesture that eventually helped him forget his anger and refuse to give up.

But Jorge was impatient. Developing a positive attitude and determination to fight, he discovered, isn't an overnight kind of achievement--not when someone has told you tomorrow might not be there for you.

Heartbroken for her son, Gloria Mora kept a journal into which she poured her pain and frustration. Refusing to let Jorge know how desperately she, wished she could kiss and make it better, she put a cheery smile on her face and the roar of the crowd at the football game in her visits with him.

After Jorge's first surgery, Gloria wrote, "Jorge woke up at 3:00 a.m., asking me for his homework. I got up and brought his books to him. He said, 'What's the use?' This was the only time he ever sounded defeated." The next day, she wrote, "I got mad at him. He smiled. He hadn't seen this side of me for a long time. It felt good to see him smile."

Encouraged by Jorge's progress, the doctors gave him a surgical implant at the end of October and allowed him to return to school two hours a day, Before his return to school on November 11, he met the LA Raiders and attended a game. But he quickly tired and left after the first half

Radiation treatments started on November 21, compounding his fatigue with queasiness. The doctors prescribed medication for the nausea, but he developed an allergic reaction to the medication. In less than a month after his first surgery, Jorge lost 20 pounds.

Still, he focused on his studies, eager to absorb as much of his school world as possible. If he planned a quiet return to his classes, his younger sister Maria had other ideas. The school's public address system announced his return, and Maria, a frosh, kept tabs on his day through students and teachers.

As embarrassing as Maria's plan was, people were worried that perhaps she returned to school too soon. Certainly Jorge was reassured by his sister's overprotective attitude.

When he began losing his hair, a normal but embarrassing side effect of radiation therapy, he appreciated the baseball caps from his relatives even more for their ability to mask his hair loss.

At school, still unsteady, he walked very slowly. When he fell asleep from exhaustion, no one woke him; his teachers understood-just as they did when he got sick and left classes without permission. Forced to drop chemistry because his arm and hand shook so much, he concentrated on his other subjects, refusing to miss school.

He wrote so slowly, Jorge's teachers worried that he'd become self-conscious. Had his teachers asked him to, he would have removed his Dodgers baseball cap although he sat at a desk in front of the room. Doggedly determined, he persisted, going to school two hours a day. Three homework problems, once 15-minute tasks, became two-hour projects. Often needing extra class time to finish his work he neither asked for nor received extra chances.

Geometry, once simple and logical, became a chore. Time and again, he asked questions when his sister helped with tutoring. His head hurt, and his weakened right hand trembled so much that he needed to write with two hands.

Medical personnel poked his arms for blood tests weekly to watch his blood cell count. Jorge grew more determined to beat this setback as the days passed. Back in Pueblo's Parkview Hospital after leaving Denver Children's Hospital, he threw himself into his studies, refusing to allow himself the privilege, luxury or time for self-pity and anger.

After Christmas, Jorge's doctors allowed him to swim and to attend school four hours a day. He loves football more than swimming, but football, he knew, was out of the question.

"You can't play if your head is fragile," he says, pausing some between words. His voice falters, another normal reaction to radiation. Although the treatments have temporarily slowed his speech and thought processes, he writes with one hand again. A warm and lively teenager, his voice dances with a smile now.

Back in school full time, Jorge says he's taken more hold of his life. "Life is too short," he says.

For Mother's Day, 1992, he bought a set of 20-pound weights for Gloria. In spite of his still weakened condition, he lugged his gift to his mother the entire three-fourths of a mile home. Gloria never expected him to run again, yet he's learned to walk, talk, run, and drive a car--all within the space of a year! But then, he's also jumping rope, lifting weights, bike riding, and playing tennis.

In October 1992, Jorge, now 16, took a date to homecoming-special enough for any other teen. To Jorge, perhaps homecoming represents life itself. He still has a long way to go, but this is the football game of his life. He's chosen to go for the touchdown.

This book is available through several bookstores online, including Amazon.com as well as through the publisher Caddo Gap Press.