Joe Andruzzi is pictured during his playing days for the New England Patriots.
SPRINGFIELD – It would likely be a safe bet that the majority of professional athletes might not be able to find Westfield on a map, save for maybe a few map-savvy pros.
For Joe Andruzzi, a former offensive lineman in the National Football League and three time-Super Bowl champion, his latest trip to western Massachusetts wasn’t a venture into uncharted waters.
“Sure, I’ve been to Westfield!” the gregarious Andruzzi said with a smile.
The reason for the former New England Patriot, Green Bay Packer, and Cleveland Brown trekking west was to serve as a special guest at the 49th annual Noble Ball at Springfield’s MassMutual Center Saturday evening, an event which brought out Westfield’s movers and shakers and benefited the West Silver Street hospital’s oncology department, a branch which is near and dear to Andruzzi.
In May 2007, the 6’3″ 300-pound guard was diagnosed with a rare form of non-Hodgkins Burkitt’s Lymphoma, and after undergoing chemotherapy treatments for the next two months at Boston’s Dana Farber Institute, the Staten Island native spent the next year in recovery, and has been cancer-free ever since.
After beating the odds and defeating one of the most aggressive forms of cancer there is, Andruzzi realized that while his career in run blocking and pass protection may’ve been over, his real mission in life was about to begin.
Spurred by his own fight and inspired by those of others, the former Division II All-American at Southern Connecticut State founded the Joe Andruzzi Foundation in 2008 to support cancer victims and their families. His presence at the Mardi Gras-themed event Saturday night was a great boost for the fundraising effort.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “As we (the Joe Andruzzi Foundation) get bigger and hit more areas, we’re able to help more and more families in the surrounding areas.”
Andruzzi’s presence helped spur on some sizable donations during the event’s live auction, as a package which included an autographed replica of his number 63 Patriots jersey sold for several thousand dollars.
“They’ve got to add it all up and approve the silent and live auctions, but it looks like it’s been a good evening and a good event,” he said.
The lineman, who has three brothers on the New York City Fire Department who responded to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, five months before Andruzzi’s Patriots shocked the world with their first championship in Super Bowl XXXVI, was also present at the bombings during this year’s Boston Marathon, as he was hosting a foundation event at the Forum Restaurant on Boylston Street, and was present near the finish line of the 26.2 mile race when the two pressure cooker bombs detonated.
An image of Andruzzi carrying an injured runner to a medical tent became an enduring symbol of the resilence of Boston after the tragic attack, but Andruzzi downplayed his role in the response as that of a man who was in the right place at the right time.
“I am definitely not a hero. I am just a bystander, and that led to my help,” he said in an April interview. “Many heroes that I look upon are people like my three brothers that are running into burning buildings when others are running out… They are the people that don’t care about their safety and are worried for other people’s safety and survival.”
As he prepared to head back to his home in Mansfield with his mother Saturday evening, another person who was on Andruzzi’s mind was C.J. Buckley, a young boy who was fighting a brain tumor at Boston Children’s Hospital when Joe and his wife Jen met and befriended him and his family in 2001.
C.J. passed away the following year, but the boy had such an impact on Andruzzi that he and his wife started the C.J. Buckley Brain Cancer Research Fund at Children’s Hospital soon thereafter.
It is the memory of Buckley that motivates Andruzzi to continue work within his own foundation to help fund research for pediatric brain cancer.
“I was so inspired by how bravely he fought his battle. But God puts us in funny situations,” Andruzzi said. “There was a reason I met C.J. (in 2001).”
