Tom Willner

Around his 30th birthday in 1999, Tom Willner discovered he had testicular cancer. He had lost his father to prostate cancer the year before, so this discovery was quite a shock. Over the course of the next year, he had five operations and four rounds of chemotherapy. His cancer had spread all the way to his lung, and he lost his ability to conceive children naturally.
As a musician, he turned to music to cope. He wrote seventeen songs and created a musical, called "Turning Thirty," which he performed for the first time in October 2008. The live debut raised $1,000 for the American Cancer Society, and resulted in a CD and a DVD.
He has been cancer free for nine years, and he and his wife now have three children. He works for the American Cancer Society as Director of Information Delivery. He has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is also a piano singer-songwriter and has released 5 CDs and a DVD, composed video and film scores, and performed on radio, television, and at Relay For Life events across the country to raise money to fight cancer.Tom Willner: Singer, songwriter, father, husbandEnlarge this image