Good Morning America film critic Joel Siegel dies of colon cancer

Joel Siegel, entertainment editor and film critic for ABC News, died of colon cancer last Friday, June 29, 2007.  He was 63.

In 1997, the same year he learned he had colon cancer, he also found out that he was to become a father for the first time.  Fearing that his son might have to grow up not knowing his father, Siegel wrote Lessons for Dylan to share those things he wanted his son to know. 

DEAR DYLAN:
They are words you don’t easily forget, “I don’t have good news.” Especially when they’re said by a doctor who’s just finished giving you a colonoscopy.

Talking about dealing with staying “positive and serene through days of discomfort” during radiation treatments and chemotherapy, Siegel wrote,

I pictured my grandmother. I’d see her face, I’d try to feel her hands, her long fingers, wrinkled as if she’d spent too much time in the pool. She, too, had colon cancer. She was diagnosed at 80 and lived till 90 and died of something else.

Chemotherapy ended at the same time Dylan was born, and Siegel had several good months,

I had about three great months. My hair came back. Darker. My colostomy was reversed. That was nice. It took major surgery and I had to figure out a new diet and relearn muscle control and Easter Sunday at friends I ran out of my diapers and had to borrow one of Dylan’s, but life was getting better. My CT-scans were clean, I was getting better.

But then the cancer returned.  He wrote in Lessons for Dylan,

Dylan was happy and gurgling. Ena was painting. I was feeling good. Things were going well.

And the witch came back.

In 1991 Siegel and actor Gene Wilder founded Gilda’s Club to support people living with cancer in honor of Wilder’s wife Gilda Radner who died of ovarian cancer.

He is survived by his wife Eva Swansea and son Dylan.