The Falcon Who Stayed Funny
Dan Mooney played soccer at North Catholic High School, graduated in 2004, and spent six years fighting cancer — the last of those six years lived as a college-age kid who still wanted to crack jokes from his hospital bed more than he wanted anyone's sympathy. He died in the summer of 2005 at the age of 20. His cousin Ashley Schneider asked Ted Silary if he could set up a TedSilary.com tribute page so the people who loved Dan could write in and remember him together.
Courage and One-Liners
Every tribute that came in said some version of the same thing: Dan wouldn't let you feel sorry for him. He would not let cancer be the subject of the conversation. He would change the subject by making a joke — one of what his cousins called "his amazing one-liners" — and then he would ask you how you were doing.
The thing that made Dan so special was his amazing spirit. Dan was the kind of person who even on his worst day sitting in a hospital was worried about everybody else. He didn't want people scared for him or feeling sorry for him — so he would crack one of his amazing one-liners that everybody remembers. He would sit and tell jokes trying to make you feel better, not even thinking of everything he was going through.
Anyone who knew my cousin Dan knew of his amazing sense of humor, his incredible courage and his will to live. Dan never felt sorry for himself. He always had a strong faith that God would help him through it all. In the 20 years that you were here on this earth, you became an inspiration to everyone you met.
Falcons Stick Together
One of the most telling tributes came from John Paffen, a 2003 North Catholic graduate who admitted he had only shared "a few casual conversations" with Dan over four years at the school. He wrote in anyway.
