Garry Betty’s Legacy for Adrenal Cancer Research

When former EarthLink CEO Garry Betty was diagnosed with adrenal cancer in late 2006, he was determined to use his experience to help others and to find a cure. So he established the Garry Betty Foundation, which recently made a $400,000 gift to the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center for its adrenal cancer
program.

“Throughout his life, Garry was an intense competitor and an eternal optimist who believed in the power of the human spirit,” says Kathy Betty, Garry’s widow. “Those very qualities led Garry to establish the Garry Betty Foundation after being diagnosed. He was determined to not only beat the odds against this rare form of cancer, but to help others as well.”

Betty, who died on January 2 at the age of 49, joined EarthLink as president and CEO in 1996, and took the company from a small regional Internet service provider with fewer than 100,000 subscribers to a national brand with more than 5 million subscribers.

The first $200,000 of the gift will be used to create the Garry Betty Scholars Program, which will pay for international researchers to come to the U-M for training in adrenal cancer research, enabling them to return to their countries to begin their own programs.

The Comprehensive Cancer Center has one of the top adrenal cancer programs in the country, thanks largely to an endowment from former U-M football coach Bo Schembechler, whose wife, Millie, died from adrenal cancer in 1992. The U-M also has one of the only multidisciplinary adrenal cancer treatment programs in the world.

—Nicole Fawcett

For additional information on the Betty gift:
www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2007/adrenal.htm

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