CLASS NOTES

	"Knock-Knock." "Who’s there?" "Mike Verno ’62." "Mike Verno who?" "Mike Verno, who turns cancer into punch lines — and punch lines into campers." Four years ago, after he’d beaten his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Verno pulled together his first joke book to raise funds — and fun — for kids with cancer. His cancer has returned, but he’s fighting back again, this time with a second collection of jokes, Camp Good Days and Special Times Joke Book A to Z. His first joke book, Camp Good Days Joke Book for Silly Kids of All Ages, raised nearly $40,000 — enough to send more than 60 kids to camp. The project began in 1994 when he was laid up in the hospital for six weeks after receiving a bone marrow transplant. "I heard kids telling jokes to keep their spirits up," he recalls. "And I could tell they needed new ones." Everyone in the transplant unit, including the doctors and nurses, started swapping funnies. One little boy’s favorite: Why did the skunk go into the restaurant? To place his odor. Jokes, Verno believes, contributed to the survival of his fellow transplant patients that summer, including four kids. "I like to think working on the jokes encouraged hope," he says. Gary Mervis, Camp Good Days founder and chair, says, "Since life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we react to it, the way Mike reacted says a lot about him." In his efforts to tailor the books as fund-raisers for other cancer camps, says Mervis, "along with his compassion, Verno brought his business skills and contacts." And a lot more groaners. But his dream of raising millions to help cancer camps everywhere keeps Verno going, despite his diagnosis last year with colon cancer and the recent reappearance of the disease in his liver. His new joke book is available through Camp Good Days. — This story is taken in part from an article that ran in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, with permission from the writer, Deborah Fineblum Raub. Our thanks to Louis V. Spiotti Sr. ’39, M.S. ’50, for bringing it to our attention. As we went to press we learned the sad news that Mike Verno '62 has passed away.