CORONADO, Calif. — On a patio at the Hotel del Coronado over breakfast Friday, the conversation between old fraternity brothers at USC made an abrupt, alarming and appetite-obliterating turn.
Was it an egg salad sandwich? A tuna salad sandwich?
Emil Wohl of Kensington began to explain how, at a charity golf event for the organization Cancer for College, the exposed midsection of Saturday Night Live legend and comedic tour de force Will Ferrell had slipped into public view. Wohl, a member of Delta Tau Delta with Ferrell and charity founder Craig Pollard, wondered aloud how much of a sandwich would fit inside Ferrell's naval.
"My belly button's like a moon crater," Ferrell said.
So, Ferrell began stuffing the sandwich — tuna, all eventually agreed — as far in as human physiology allowed. Then on a dare, both decided to divide it … and eat it. The laughs rolled as they explained how a college connection offered roots to a San Diego golf event providing scholarships for teens impacted by cancer and, in too many cases, families financially ravaged by the disease.
They've heard all the stories about chemotherapy and bone-marrow transplants, the joyful medical reports, the crushing relapses. They've ridden all those laughs and tears to raising as much money as possible to make college dreams a reality for kids who thought it might be impossible.
What grew from Pollard's personal cancer fight in high school and again in college became a lives-altering mission to help kids regain traction when cancer upends their worlds. Twenty-four people capped the first event 29 years ago with a reception in Pollard's back yard in Vista as the group raised money for one $500 scholarship.
Ferrell, a fledgling member of SNL, wrote a check for $50.
In 2022, the charity will rush past 2,000 scholarships awarded that now have reached $5,000 for each year, or $20,000 in all. A man from Orlando paid $57,000 to chip and putt his way around the municipal course with the movie mainstay on Friday.
"Yeah, I wrote a check for $50," said Ferrell, with a grin. "Craig still gives me crap about that. I was not secure with my long-term employment (at SNL). I felt like it was going well, but I'm just like, OK, I'm just going to write a check for $50."
The beer-soaked friendships and the initial trickle of money hardly seemed like a harbinger of something that has blossomed into a wave of heartwarming good.
Ferrell told a story.
"My wife (Viveca) was flying to meet me, maybe in New York," he said. "A flight attendant comes up to her. She said, 'I hate to bother you. I know who you are, but my son was a scholarship recipient.' She started crying, 'I just can't thank you, your husband and Craig enough for my son getting to meet Will and Craig.' She asked if it was OK to send some photos of that day. I think he passed in his second year of college. The flight attendant said, 'You guys have to know, for that brief period of time, he felt so special.'
"My wife started crying. They're both having this moment on a crowded flight. It's huge to me, knowing the tentacles of this thing continue to touch so many people."
When Pollard arrived at USC as a baseball player, he already had summited one cancer mountain after being diagnosed. He hurdled six months of chemo, three months of radiation and surgery that removed his spleen, appendix and several lymph nodes. He never stopped playing baseball.
Then, as a college sophomore, cancer returned, as it does for too many.
"The second time was way tougher," Pollard said. "The first one, I was living at home. I was home and had my parents there. The second time, the chemo stopped working. I took out a piece of white paper, I think I still have it, where I put 1 through 24 on it and taped it above my head. I wrote below it, 'Kick its ass.' The number 24 represented the number of chemo treatments I was going to have. When the chemo stopped working, they said my blood cell count got so low that they couldn't treat me anymore.
"I felt like I'd already beaten cancer and now this. They said my best chance at survival was a bone-marrow transplant."
A life-defining moment arrived at the lowest moment.
"I was sitting in this ICU room (at the City of Hope cancer center)," said Pollard, who now lives in San Marcos. "It was like (the movie) 'The Boy in the Plastic Bubble' because they give you lethal doses of chemotherapy. All of sudden your body gets third-degree burns all over to where your skin is peeling off. Nobody can come into the room to see you because you literally have no white blood cells.
"I remember sitting there, 'If I get out of here, I've got to do something.' I kind of took inventory of my life. I looked at myself as this selfish (jerk) who only cared about myself and baseball. I really didn't give a (crap) about anything else. That made me realize, I've got to make a difference."
As Ferrell's career rocketed into the stratosphere, the emotional ties to Cancer for College and the friend he so hugely admired cemented.
"The light bulb moment for me was listening to the scholarship recipients who got up and spoke," Ferrell said. "At the time it was like, they've already been through a lifetime of struggle. Everyone has tears in their eyes listening to these stories, the adversity and what it means to the families.
"I said to Craig, 'I'm in. This is the one (main) charity I'll always be involved in.' "
In 2008, a check arrived at the Cancer for College office. When they opened it, a $250,000 check from Anheuser-Busch arrived. No one knew why. It was for a Bud Light commercial tied to the release of the movie "Semi-Pro."
"I was like, this will be great," Ferrell said of donating the entirety of what he was paid. "I'm not going to tell them."
More checks landed. One from Procter & Gamble for an Old Spice commercial totaled $500,000. Another from Disney chipped in another $110,000. It's almost impossible to fully gauge Ferrell's full-blown contributions.
The fun runs shoulder-to-shoulder with the finances.
At one tournament, Ferrell used a driver to hit a rotisserie chicken for the ceremonial tee shot. He's done snow angels in sand traps. He talked a friend wearing a Top Gun flight suit into swimming in a pond on one course.
During the pandemic, Ferrell conducted Zoom calls to scholarship winners from a back room at Clem's Tap House in Kensington. He wore the Wonder bread helmet from "Talladega Nights" and removed it to reveal the news and himself.
"Will would ask them these goofy questions," Wohl said. "He'd say, you have to answer a question before you get the scholarship. 'Do you know the ingredients of a Reuben sandwich?' "
Speaking of sandwiches, how much of that tuna sandwich, um …
"Made it into the cavity of the belly button?" said Ferrell, finishing the question. "Three-fourths."
Another laugh. Another day helping kids with cancer find a path.
