Bob Silipigni flashes a smile as he receives several awards from Carolyn Zeller, center, and Caroline Wroczynski on Tuesday evening, Feb. 23, 2016, at Painted Kanvas, 1540 Wakarusa Drive, for his Relay for Life fundraising achievements. Silipigni raised 5,583.00 for the 2015 Relay for Life, and since 2001 he has raised a total of 47,180.64. So far this year, he has raised more than 0,000.

He’s done it again.

Bob Silipigni, of Lawrence, raised more money for Relay for Life of Douglas County in 2015 than he had in any previous year; however, one could say that about each year he’s participated.

Myriad plaques, shiny glass trophies and other mementos adorn a credenza just inside the door of his home, all tokens of the American Cancer Society’s appreciation for his 15 years of tireless effort to raise donations.

Still, it’s not really about the money.

Bob Silipigni, center, walks with the LHS Lions relay team during the annual Relay for Life event Friday evening, June 12, 2015, at Sports Pavilion Lawrence.

“I don’t want to appear money-greedy. It’s not just the dollars. It’s what I want the dollars to do,” Silipigni said. “We hear the term ‘Money talks’ — well, I hope so.”

And what he wants those dollars to do is fight back against the thief he says steals loved ones and friends away from us: cancer.

Silipigni walks door-to-door up and down countless neighborhood streets to collect — sometimes on beautiful days, and sometimes when winter is biting its hardest — but even disregarding the physical labor and time-consuming paperwork, his task is not an easy one.

‘Like being kicked in the head’

Yes, Silipigni is all about the fight, and his mission. He chooses to get out of bed every day to do what he does, and he is passionate about the cause. But he’s not the eternal optimist, and the many deaths each year begin to take their toll. Even as the donations mount, enabling researchers to chisel away at the massive medical enigma of our time, the death counts rise.

“For the first five years I did this, I just felt positive and upbeat about it because it was a worthy cause,” Silipigni said. “Then eventually, staying with it long enough, once I got to about the 10-year point, then some of my donors contracted cancer.”

After a couple more years, he said, most of those donors had gone into remission — but not all of them.

“Over the last three years now, some of my longtime donors have passed from cancer, too. And that — it affects your thought process, especially if the people were kind to you. There’s a remorse,” Silipigni said.

Last week, he got a phone call he’d been dreading: a lifelong friend died, about six months after receiving a sudden diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer. Doctors had looked for blood clots in her legs, but upon finding nothing, decided to check her lungs, Silipigni said.

“She says, ‘Bob, my life was just calming down, and when the doctor told me what was going on,’ she said, ‘it was like being kicked in the head,'” Silipigni recalled.

That friend joins a few more of the people he’s been closest to: his grandfather, uncle, employer and dog, Linus, who died from a brain tumor. Those losses, and the losses of donors who had become friends, prey upon Silipigni’s mind.

“For the last 24 hours (since I got the call), I’ve been walking around — I’m even questioning myself, why I’ve been doing this for the last 15 years,” he said.

And often when it’s not cancer, it’s something else. He’s lost donors to ALS, and he has friends experiencing symptoms of diseases that have yet to be diagnosed.

Sometimes, it’s the cancer treatments.

“Some people tolerated as much as they could of the drugs. They tried to beat the cancer, and they did, but my God, what they went through,” he said. “I hope I live to see the day that chemo can be considered a primitive form of therapy.”

Silipigni doesn’t always know what to expect when he visits a donor each year. The inconstancy of people’s lives bring big questions to his mind.

“When you walk the streets like I do, you’ve got time to think. And also being single, and an only child, I’ve had plenty of time to think, and I really wonder, ‘Why are we here? What is all this mess about?'” he said.

‘A lot of cancer survivors out there’

Silipigni acknowledged that bad news tends to travel faster and further, and said it would probably find him even if he tried to hide under a rock.

The news isn’t always bad, though.

“I’ve walked this community for so many years, I’ll tell you right now, there are a lot of cancer survivors out there,” he said. “… Even if we’re not as far along as we’d like to be, we could at least talk about the things we have done.”

Silipigni said it’s often the little things that keep him going when times do get tough. Just last week as he was walking, he said, a woman gave him one of the most delicious pastries he’s had in his life; another gave him a dozen eggs, fresh from the chickens she keeps.

“It’s kindnesses like this that keep you going,” he said. “If you don’t have rewarding interaction with people, you’re not going to keep doing it.”

Treats like those are wonderful, but the friendships he’s developed with so many people are the true rewards. He even has Christmas dinner with a family he first met when collecting a donation.

“I don’t know how much time I have ahead of me, but someday when this stops, I will always have a gratitude to so many of the people in this community who’ve had me in their homes and treated me as they have,” he said. “I will always be indebted to them and appreciative.”

And he said he’s honored to have kept in touch with many donors who have moved out of town over the years.

“I miss seeing those friendly souls in town, and when I walk by their houses, I think of them. I do,” he said.

‘Thankful for the many kind souls’

Bob Silipigni and Diane Ash, both of Lawrence, were recognized Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011, for their Relay For Life of Douglas County fundraising efforts. Their Lawrence High School team raised 8,745 for the American Cancer Society in 2010, which was the largest amount of the 84 teams that participated.

Silipigni doesn’t know how many more years he’ll continue as he has.

“I don’t know what my life is going to be like in another year. None of us do. So I’m going to have to wait and see,” he said. “… I hope to have good health so that it’s my decision if I don’t go out and do it.”

Last year, he said, he was so fatigued he wasn’t sure he’d be back. He thinks that may have been preventable, though.

“I think a great deal of my problem last year was that I was dehydrated the whole campaign,” he said. “So if I can keep hydrated, I think I’m gonna hold up a lot better.”

He doesn’t want to name a set goal amount to collect this year.

“I’m not gonna say, because there’s too much I can’t control,” he said. “The only thing I can do is try my best.”

The many friends he’s made along the way truly move Silipigni.

“I am just so thankful for the many kind souls and the interactions I’ve had with so many people, and the ones who write to me,” he said. “The little notes … I save all of them, each year.”