A memoir recounting the life and battles of the late Stuart Scott was released on Tuesday.

“Every Day I Fight” relives stories from legendary sports broadcaster and Tar Heel Stuart Scott. Scott died on January 4 of this year. He co-wrote his memoir with journalist Larry Platt, who says they finished the manuscript in the month before Scott died, following a seven-year battle with cancer.

“It was early December that we completed work on the manuscript,” he says. “We worked on it for most of the last year: a lot of in-person interviews, a lot of time spent together, and a lot of late-night phone calls when he was in the hospital.”

Listen to the full interview with Larry Platt below:

 

Platt refers to the method he used to help tell Scott’s story as “mind melding.” He says that is the result of sharing each other’s space and thoughts.

Platt says Scott was on a mission to finish the book before he ran out of time.

“There was a sense of urgency in terms of getting the book done, but there was also a sense of urgency in how he lived his life,” he says.

Platt says there was a singular motivation for that drive.

“He wanted this to be a raw account of, not just his battle against cancer, but of a life of worthy fights. And the triumph over adversity on many levels,” he says. “And he wanted to do this for a couple of reasons: most importantly for his daughters Taelor and Sydni.”

Scott said multiple times his drive to fight cancer every day was to be able to walk his daughters down the aisle.

While that, unfortunately, won’t happen, in the book Scott recounts how having cancer caused him to cherish every moment he had with his daughters.

Platt says the cancer drove Scott.

“It made him better at living,” he says. “This thing that he hated, cancer, actually – as he says – ‘made me the man I always wanted to be.’ Because he was, by necessity, present in every moment.”

Platt says he admired Scott’s personality on Sportscenter, as many in our community and around the country did, but what stood out to Platt during the process of writing this book was the craftsman behind the personality.

“He was a performer, and that was a lifelong thing,” he says. “He was a high school wide receiver football star, but also was in the school plays, and played the lead in “West Side Story”, and was a thespian.

“Because he always had this creative gene.”

Platt adds this book is much more than a sports memoir; that it has a personal touch.

“On a personal level, it’s very stunning,” he says. “Because you can’t be this close to someone going through this and not internalize, and not ask yourself: Would I have character, the grace, the presence of mind to react in an adverse situation with this kind of large-hearted thinking.”

Platt says, while he prefers you purchase a copy of the book at an independent book store, it is available in major outlets across the country. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Jimmy V Foundation for cancer research.