The Owner's Box After Dark, Ep. 60.

This Boston Globe story outlines Alice Cook's courageous battle with ALS.

I have been reminded quite a lot lately about the passage of time and the frailty of our existence on this earth.

I don't suppose I should be surprised by any of it. After all, it knocks on your door even when uninvited and pushes right past you to take up an unwelcome residence.

For instance, I've been flat on my back for almost a month because of a nasty viral infection -- not COVID, not pneumonia, more likely something I would have shed after a week or two when I was a lot younger. In the grand scheme of things, it hasn't been much more than a nagging aggravation, and it even had the surprisingly positive side effect of dropping several pounds off my frame through lack of appetite, so I may actually have come out of it on the plus side of things.

But that will be the extent of the whining you will read from me on that topic. People that I know, and care about, are facing much greater challenges with much greater resolve and determination.

One of those persons is someone with whom I developed a lasting friendship over the many years that I covered the New England Patriots for the local newspaper.

Former WBZ-TV sports reporter Alice Cook is currently in the final stages of her training for a run in the Boston Marathon. It will be her third participation in the annual Hopkinton-to-Boston jaunt of 26.2 miles, which is something I couldn't accomplish unless I was behind the wheel of a car. The kicker here is that it will be her second marathon following her diagnosis for ALS (popularly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) in 2023.

Alice Cook

Alice has a form of the disease that has attacked the area of her brain that controls her facial muscles; to date, she still has very good control of her mobility, but she has lost the ability to speak. There is no known cure and the disease is relentless in its progression.

A more detailed explanation of the challenges facing Alice appeared in a Boston Globe article that appeared on April 3, written by veteran reporter Kevin Paul Dupont. I've put a screenshot of that article at the top of this post. It's easily accessible on the Globe's website and it contains a video snippet of how Alice can still "speak" with the use of remarkable technology -- she types her words into an iPad, and software translates them into sound. And with the help of her former colleagues at Channel 4, old recordings of her interviews were used to teach the software how to present that sound in a very close approximation of her normal voice.

I first met Alice in the mid-1980s, when the Patriots held their annual summer training camp at what was then Bryant College in Smithfield, R.I. At the time, she was the first woman that had been hired as a full-time sports reporter in the Boston TV market, and despite a series of challenges that came from being a woman in what was then a close-knit and male-dominated media corps, she persevered and emerged as one of the region's most respected TV reporters -- and never lost her characteristic enthusiasm or optimism on the way there.

Alice and partner Bill Fauver.

A lot of that resolve came from her background as an Olympic athlete. She was a pairs skater that competed in the Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1976. She and her partner had finished second in the U.S. championships, 12th in the Olympics and then ninth in the following World Championships before she left the ice to finish her education at Boston College and then head on to sports journalism. You don't endure the sacrifices of a lifetime of training and competition without developing a pretty tough backbone, and there was always a steely will to succeed lurking just under the surface of Alice's always-pleasant demeanor.

Those are topics we touched upon when she and I sat down at Gillette Stadium on the 25th anniversary of her hiring by WBZ (Oct. 15, 2009) to record an interview for the frequent Patriots-related podcasts I did for The Sun Chronicle's website that I called "Mark Farinella's Audio Blog." I found that interview in my archives after reading the Globe story, and then turned it into the 60th episode of my current video podcast as a personal tribute to my friend. 

In the interview, Alice and I talk about her background and what it took for her to overcome the challenges that she faced when female reporters were just beginning to make inroads in the industry. She readily admitted it was difficult -- remember, she started almost five years before the notorious sexual harassment of former Boston Herald reporter Lisa Olson in the Patriots' locker room -- and from her description, you learn a lot about the strength of character it took for Alice to advance past it all.

And I will admit, it was so very good to hear Alice's voice again after so many years. And I'm so happy that technology will keep her voice front and center in the lives of her loving family.

I hope you will enjoy this trip in my personal time machine.