My Dad Lost His Retirement, Help Him Fight Neck Cancer

My name is Brooke, and this story is about my dad, Ted. My dad has survived head and neck cancer three times, but the fight has left him with a crater in his skull, paralysis in his face, an eye that can’t close, and mounting medical bills for uncovered treatments. On top of that, our family has faced over a year of ceaseless lawsuits tied to the loss of his lifelong business, with legal fees of sometimes more than $10,000 monthly destroying every bit of my parents' retirement savings.

My dad's dream is simple: to get back to the retirement boat he poured his heart into restoring, and to take one more fishing trip. We need help covering urgent medical costs, legal fees, and boat repairs so he can make that trip a reality. Please donate and share. Even $10 brings us closer to giving him this chance.

The story of how our family lost everything and spent the last year fighting to try and save our family's legacy is complicated. If you'll stay with me, I'll try to tell it as best I can.

Ya'll might know my dad as the man who ran Horseman's Supply, a tack and feed store out in Weatherford, Texas. What started as a tiny trailer full of odds and ends parked at the race track grew into a full-blown business. My dad loved that place. He was so ingrained in the fibers of that store, with his passion and endless work ethic, that people called it "Ted's." It really was a place that he made special.

It was our family's business. We all worked there our whole lives, but no one worked harder than my dad. The first time he was diagnosed with aggressive metatstatic stage IV pharyngeal cancer, he went through radiation and chemo in Houston, driving there and back in his old pickup, and never stopping working. When his cancer recurred years later, he went through an extreme procedure called a radical neck dissection. It left him disabled and in chronic pain.

Throughout all this, he showed up, worked tirelessly, and never complained. After 30 years of building that business from the ground up, he decided to sell it to someone he trusted to carry on his legacy. For my dad, retirement was nothing lavish; he grew up fishing the Louisiana coast, and he wanted to spend the rest of his days out fishing, doing what he loved, sharing stories of the good old days with his family.

After my dad sold the business, he bought a boat. He and I searched for almost a year to find a boat that we could afford, and that fit dad's specific needs. Our boat is a catamaran, a boat with two hulls instead of one, which makes it smoother on the waves. My dad needed that stability because of his chronic pain. Our boat is 20 years old, and it needs a lot of work. While we made repairs to the boat, I was going to learn to drive it safely so that I could help him navigate around the ocean.

We were so excited to start our adventures.

Here is where the story gets really hard to tell, because every day, I wonder why it happened this way.

The person that we sold the business to closed down the store. That old girl never even warned us. My dad's retirement payments stopped. He had owner financed the business to the old girl so that she could afford to buy it by making payments over time. We were never warned what bankruptcy would do to us in a situation like this.

Because of the way that the old girl declared bankruptcy, the bankruptcy officials seized my dad's store, and with it, his property. The contract for the business sale, which was done by a lawyer, was supposed to secure my dad's assets just in case something like this happened. We trusted those documents, just like we trusted the old girl who signed them.

The bankruptcy trustee gutted my dad's business, a life's work, and sold it for scrap. While we waited... and waited... for the bankruptcy to settle (the old girl had long since walked away, free and clear), my dad's cancer came back for a third time.

My dad was in the ICU for two weeks while the doctors carved away part of his skull. They put leeches on his skin for days and days to get blood flowing to a graft they did over the spot, which caused him to need constant blood transfusions. Then he needed radiation, and two surgeries to repair his eye, which was paralyzed from the tumor eating through his nerves. He will be on immune therapy for the rest of his life.

Most recently, the eye surgeries failed, and now he may lose the eye due to damage to his cornea. Part of the graft on his skull also failed, exposing the skull bone, and he had to have another reconstructive surgery to cover the hole, which had to be done by harvesting skin from his scalp.

My dad is the kind of guy who will never give up. But we can't afford to go back to our boat, because the bankruptcy trustees and lawyers are holding everything my dad ever worked for in legal purgatory. We are scared; the system seems designed to siphon away every penny from this man who worked his whole life, gave selflessly, and tried his best to provide opportunities to the people and the community around him.

I'm proud of my dad's legacy, and I want him to have the health, the peace, and the retirement that he deserves.

I have the best dad in the world. So I made a post on TikTok for Father's Day telling the world my dad's story, and it went viral. I'm so grateful for all the support he's gotten.

Every day brings new challenges for my dad, but he continues to fight with the same quiet strength he’s always shown. Your support means more than words can express. It’s hope, relief, and a step toward seeing him out on the water again.

If you can, please donate and share this page with others. Together, we can help him heal, ease the burden, and give him the fishing trip he’s been dreaming of.