By seven am, somebody's knocking on the door saying, I know it doesn't start until later, but I'm going out of town and I had to meet you and give you my donation, and it was NonStop.

At the end of the day, I honestly thought it was too much for her.

A lot of people don't realize this about her, but she didn't like attention like that.

It wasn't about her.

It almost embarrassed her.

And at the end of the day, I said, what did you think, Alex, thinking this may have been too much for her, and she said it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

She had raised two thousand dollars, and I remember feeling like I was going to cry because I knew then that for all of my sort of not mocking but joking about the lemonade stand that's going to cure cancer, it really meant something to her.

Welcome to an army of normal folks.

I'm Bill Courtney.

I'm a normal guy.

I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach and inner City Memphis.

And somehow that last part led to an oscar for the film about our team.

It's called undefeated, y'all.

I believe our country's problems are never going to be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox, but.

Rather by an army of normal folks.

That's us, just you and me deciding, Hey, you know what, maybe I can help.

That's what Liz Scott, the.

Voice you just heard, has done.

Liz's four year old daughter, Alex, was fighting neuroblastoma cancer, and yet Alex, at four years old, decided to dig deep, and she hosted a lemonade stand to raise money.

But not for herself so she could get a toy, and not for herself so she could make herself happy.

But this four year old with cancer.

Decided to host a lemonade stand to raise money for child hood cancer research.

By the time Alex died.

When she was eight years old, her lemonade stand Get This raised a million bucks from four to eight years old.

By her death at eight, she'd raised a million dollars selling lemonade and Liz, Alex's mom, and her husband Jay, have continued building their daughter's legacy ever since.

Alex's lemonade Stan foundation has raised an incredible three hundred and fifty million dollars with a literal army of normal folks hosting lemonade stands for them across the country.

Guys, listen to every word of this interview.

I cannot wait for you to meet Liz right after these brief messages from our general sponsors.

Liz Scott, Welcome to Memphis.

Thank you.

Yeah, where'd you flew in from Philly?

Philadelphia?

Yeah?

Do you get a NonStop flight on that bill?

Yes?

Very easy, very easy.

Yeah, because we used to have a hub.

We were in Northwest Hub in Memphis, and we had NonStop everywhere with Delta Bolt Northwest.

We lost our hub and we lost a lot of our nonstops.

Well, I think you could go NonStop to Philadelphia.

Yeah, we can't.

Now that's that's the beautiful thing everybody.

Liz Scott is the co executive director with her husband Jay, of Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation.

More important, Liz is Alex's mom, and we're going to talk about that first.

For those of you listening, we are at Firebirds Wood fired Grill in Karivilt, Tennessee.

I think fire Birds is a big old sponsor of Alex's limit.

They have been a sponsor for thirteen years, so we've grown up together.

A thirteen year sponsor of Alex's lemonade stands.

So thank you to Firebirds.

And we are live in front of a group of people who are interested in Liz and Alex's story.

So say hi everybody.

Oh that's weak, say hi everybody.

Thank you.

So fans, Liz, what do you do?

I mean, there's live people to hear your story.

Pretty cool.

I think some of them are your fans.

What's up to?

Your fans are your fans too?

So you've got to give yourself some credit.

If we said, hey, Bill's going to be at Firebirds, y'all come, we wouldn't have anybody here at all.

So it's you.

Your story has so much to it and we could do a ten hour show on it.

But very briefly, where are you from?

How'd you grow up?

I grew up right outside Hartford, Connecticut in a place called Windsor, Connecticut.

Great childhood, very lucky, great place to grow up.

One of nine child Yes, so I grew up with a lot of love and family around all the time and had.

A pretty typical for nine kids.

My dad was a saint, as is my mom.

He was a nuclear power plant engineer.

Wow, so he specialized in I think, like how you get rid of the waita.

Like kindling on each other?

And beds?

I mean, how how do you?

How do you?

We all had our own beds.

At least I was number seven, so I, you know, may have had it a little more cushy than some of the older ones.

We all had our own beds, but we did.

I shared a room until high school.

And in fact, I remember when you know, as somebody moved to college, that's it your room.

After a little while, your room, what's gone?

Yeah?

And I remember my mom just assumed I would want to move.

Or my sister moved to my other sister's room, and I was devastated.

I loved sharing a room with my sister.

That's awesome.

So you and Jamie, where'd that happen?

We met at Windsor high school.

Were high school sweethearts, no way, Yes, So we had a similar upbringing in many ways.

He's one of five.

We didn't know each other until high school, and we dated not only in high school but all through college.

We both went to the University of Connecticut, go Huskies.

I'm sure you've heard of them.

They're a really good basketball program.

Yeah, but they're stinking football and that's what we care about.

That's actually true.

I know it is all right.

So sweet American, wonderful life.

Married.

I think, how many kids in total do you have?

We have four children.

So we got married right after college young twenty two twenty three, and then we had our first or oldest at twenty five, and Alex was born when I was twenty six.

My husband was twenty seven, so we had would go on to have three kids in four years, and Alex was our second child, and then we had two other boys.

And what were you and Jay doing for a living?

So after we graduated from Yukon, we my husband really wanted He had his own painting business in college that was like pretty big, but he didn't want to do that forever.

So he decided he wanted to start his own business, and he very smartly researched and decided that coffee was the next big thing.

This was nineteen ninety two, and wanted to open like the first on the campus what we called gourmet coffee cappuccino espresso back in the day.

And can you tell me he's a founder of Starbucks.

We're all leaving.

Well, no, it was called the Java Joint.

And because we were young and as you can and now I know now as a fifty five year old, I would be like, yeah, we can't do that.

We went to the school, we said we want to open something right in the middle of campus said we would love that, but we're not giving you electricity, we're not giving you water.

So we had a cart maid that was electric powered, propane powered espresso machine, opened up shop and from day one we loved it and the campus loved it.

And my first son was born shortly after we opened that, and then after it was very successful.

We were actually the week Alex was diagnosed, we were having a meeting with the owner of another shop that was in Hartford, so we were going to open our second location, and we ended up canceling the meeting, and ultimately because of her diagnosis, we not only canceled and didn't open the second shop, but we sold the Java Joint.

So the point is, briefly, just to establish kind of who you are.

You're one of nine, your husband's one of five high school sweethearts.

He paints, you go to college, you start your life and you have a little boy, and now you have a little girl.

You have this budding business.

You're starting a wonderful kind of normal American dream, but just a life, just a normal person living life.

And Alex comes along and you're giddy because you have a second child.

And at one, I think is when the story of Alex really begins.

Take us through that.

You're absolutely right, I mean we sort of we had a vision right for what life could be at that point with the two young kids in the growing business, like we all do.

And Alex was diagnosed two days before her first birthday and everything changed after that.

So much good came from it, but certainly, you know, there were many, many harder times and we ever anticipated as parents when you have children of kind of what my happen?

That was not really something that we thought would happen.

A child with cancer, Tell me what it was.

So she was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, which is.

Originally she had a tumor.

That's all you knew.

Yes, kind of.

Everybody listening and joining us needs to understand I'm asking questions about ultimately the death of your daughter.

So I want to be empathetic and respectful, but I also think it's really important for people to have perspective.

So I don't want to be pushy here, but I think it's important that people understand the evolution of your mind as a parent as well as what Alex went through, because I get she had neuroblastoma, but really, your first thing was my daughter has a tumor.

That's right, that's right, that's very thank you for saying that, because when she was first and we were told it was a tumor, I still didn't think she had cancer.

In fact, my sister gave me a book that was called When Your Child Has Cancer or something along those lines, and they put us on the oncology floor and I was not happy about it.

We don't, I don't why would.

I don't need this book and I don't need to be on this floor.

She has a tumor, she doesn't have cancer.

So it took me a little while to accept the fact that we were what we were dealing with was cancer.

So what they have to do for this tumor.

Well, the first thing they did was they felt she needed an immediate tumor resection.

So surgery to remove the tumor was very large in her abdomen and wrapping around her spine, so they felt like it needed to come out.

They did that surgery the day before her first birthday.

She came out of surgery.

They were doing it in two parts, front and then back, so belly and then spine.

After the belly surgery to remove the bulk of the tumor, she came out and they said, you know, we might wait to do the spinal surgery now.

And she was in the ICU.

It had been a long day and they started to seem like they were concerned about something.

They asked us to leave, and a few minutes later they came back in and told us that during removing this large tumor was so large that some of her blood vessels were in the middle of it, and her spinal cord blood flow was compromised and she was paralyzed from the chest down, and they wanted to bring her right back into surgery to make sure it wasn't the spinal tumor that was causing it.

So she went back into surgery.

Came out of surgery at one or two am on her first birthday, and I just remember sitting there.

People had brought balloons for her and some presents for her, and just holding her hand and thinking, this is your child's first birthday, right, there's so much meaning in that, and just wondering what life if she survived, what kind of life she would have if she was going to be paralyzed.

And it was one of our lowest moments.

But I think really quickly she just showed me, as she did many times in her life, that that's not what you're thinking about in those times.

Right where you're thinking about is moving forward and getting better and enjoying the good days.

And she really did that from the very beginning.

She showed us how to do that.

And now a few messages from our gender sponsors, But first, I hope you'll consider signing up to join the army at normal folks dot us.

By signing up, you'll receive a weekly email with short episodes summaries in case you happen to miss an episode, or if you prefer reading about our incredible guests, we'll.

Be right back.

As a parent and my children, Alex hates when I use this adjective, but I consider my children delicious.

I savor them, you know what I mean.

They're the greatest blessing in Lisa, in my life and whenever any of our children have been sick and we dealt with one that had some real problems.

In that moment, you want to be tough and strong for your kid, but you're also dealing with this juxtaposition of devastation inside.

You balance that for me because that am I wrong?

Or is that you.

Are absolutely right?

I remember after being told as new and sitting with her for a minute, they had this little room we could go into that was private, and Jay and I were both sitting in the room, not even able to comfort each other, just crying, you know, sobbing, sobbing, hands on head, just spiraling.

And then one of the nurses knocked and she said, you know, we already mentioned I have a big family.

That a couple of my sisters were there, and I literally said, I can't do this.

I can't talk to anybody else right now.

I can't.

I can't do it.

But very quickly something inside me just said, you know, you have to do this.

You have children depending on you, right you can't sit in here and feel sorry.

You have to get out there and do the things that you need to do as a mom, and opened that door, honestly, and never really looked back to that moment except to say that I'm glad something inside of me told me just to stop, get out there and do what you need to do.

As we unfold the rest of the story.

The reason I wanted to hear that from you, which you and I've never met her talked ever before.

Now, I had a sense that that's what you'd say.

And I think it's important because these years later, as we celebrate this amazing organization and all that you've done, and we see this, you said it, so I'm allowed to do it now, a fifty five year old woman who's raised a family, and we celebrate all of this.

I think it's really important that we're cognizant of and remember the trauma and the tragedy and the pain and then the strength to overcome it.

Normal folks experience that.

Normal people.

We have moneys, family problems, sick people, we have marital problems, we have financial issues, we have all this crap that heaps up on us and beats us up in life.

And the beauty of an army of normal folks is people who overcome that and do things not because they're bequeathed with this great opportunity, but despite what they're faced with, and that strength is what's inspiring.

And I just want to remind everybody this is born from a family who were devastated by one year old dying child.

And certainly there's a lot to celebrate, and we're going to get to that, but if we lose fact of the true obstacles and the true trauma of this, I think we diminish the beauty of a success.

Makes sense, it.

Makes a lot of sense, and I really appreciate you saying that because I often feel that the hardship that Alex went through pretty much her entire life is easily overlooked because of the incredible inspiration that she left us, and even the stories I tell, which are very inspiring about her, behind those stories was the fact that she had this strength and she had this perspective because of what happened to her in her life, and her life was really, really hard.

So you're left with a child who is now possibly paralyzed one year old, and she grows tell us about it.

So as far as the paralysis goes, within a few weeks she started showing signs of being able to move her legs when we asked her to and started physical therapy, and without spending too much time on that whole story, eventually she really she screamed and fussed through every physical therapy session, but she did what she needed to do.

Her goal was to be able to walk without leg braces, and she eventually did it.

She could kind of walk across the room with touch points, and that was alone was an incredible accomplishment because she was still considered pretty significantly paralyzed and had no sensation in her legs.

She also went on to so when a child is diagnosed with cancer, there's a protocol typically unless it's super rare, and the protocol is designed to be the same at pretty much every institution that's treating your child, and it's designed to get your child to a cure ultimately, hopefully except for those unfortunate rare ones where there's no cure still, and in her case, there was a path to a cure, and we we started down that path, which included surgery, chemotherapy, Radiation therapy had a lot of stops and starts because it would work and then stop working.

So we were seeing making second opinions and third opinions with in collaboration with our doctor in Hartford.

We were in Hartford still at the time, after three plus years of treatment, we all of our second and third opinions agreed that there really wasn't much anything left to try for her.

She was three going on four and we were told she was incurable and we were out of options known options.

So that's when again another moment where we had to face this reality.

That's a good shot.

It was, it was, It was.

It was even harder than the diagnosis because when she was diagnosed, you have this hope that she's going to get better.

You know, you're going through this treatment with the idea that your child is going to be cured and you can picture them in ten years or twenty years, or you know, at their wedding or whatever, you know, whatever it is you dream about for your children as they grow.

But once you hear incurable, all of those things are taken away immediately.

I'm trying to put myself in your shoes, and I guess my my reaction as a father would be, well, first question, how long do we have?

And second thing is what are we going to do to make the best of that time?

Is that what you do.

More or less.

I mean, our thought was along the lines of how much time.

We felt like there were stones left unturned, and we weren't ready to just take one, two, three opinions and assume that that was the right path.

And the biggest reason we did that because that is a path and sometimes parents have to make that decision, is because she was doing pretty well on her good days when she felt good.

The cancer in her bones, which is what the problem was at this point, was causing her so much pain that we felt like not treating her would only make that worse.

So the days, however long, she had, would not be good quality time.

So we started approaching different places to find out if they had something that could help her.

And that was probably the words we use.

We didn't ask for a cure.

We knew that no one was going to promise that, but we wanted her to have a treatment that was different than what she had and something that could maybe give her good quality time and relieve her pain.

And that is literally what we found with a doctor in Philadelphia, which honestly has led to so much, including her lemonade stand.

That's the power we learned A.

Voice y'all just said okay and moved to Philly.

Yeah, so we didn't move right away.

We traveled to Philadelphia for a consul.

This was incredibly exciting.

It was a targeted therapy back in nineteen ninety nine, which was kind of a buzzword then but not necessarily reality, something that her tumors would soak up, but had far less toxicity than chemotherapy and everything she had been through.

He really felt like it would help Herry.

He had given it to one child before.

So we traveled here with so much hope, but at the same time, you know, you always guard yourself from having too much hope because so much had disappointed.

And she came out of that hospital room.

She was in isolation for three days.

Essentially we could go in and out, but not for extended periods because she herself was radioactive from this treatment.

She came out of that treatment all smiles and she said that treatment worked.

Let's go shopping because that was her fun thing to do when she valcated something.

Yes, and we went shopping for a Christmas dress.

And that was also like very symbolic because sort of dreading the upcoming holidays.

Now we had this child who said, I feel good, Let's go get a Christmas dress.

And we went back to Connecticut, and we continued to travel back and forth to Philadelphia, with our home hospital still being Connecticut coordinating things.

But after a year of doing that and me, after a long day at the hospital, deciding we should just drive home, getting on the Garden State Parkway South, which might not mean much to anybody here unless they've been on the Garden State Parkway, not realizing I was going the wrong way because I was very distracted, until two hours later when we were like almost in Cape May and then turning around and having to drive six hours home, got home, and we said, this isn't working for us anymore.

My son was in first grade.

He liked to come with us.

We were getting a notice from the school that he had missed too much school because we kept pulling him out to travel.

My husband had a commissioned sales job in Connecticut, which was great, but he needed to work to make money.

A lot of things weren't working for us, except for the fact that we had this amazing support system.

And then one day his boss said, how would you like to transfer to Philadelphia, which was he was selling medical books which was a bigger tear.

It was less overnight travel, and essentially he would it would be a great opportunity, and we felt like we couldn't say no to that.

It was a place we wanted to be for our child and for our family, so we jumped at the chance.

But it was a very very hard move.

We'll be right back.

So now you're in Philly, you have some hope that at least there's some quality of life, even though that's not a change that sets the stage for this kid wearing you out and irritating you about wanting to start.

A limonade stance.

Yes, and that's kind of the beginning.

It is the beginning.

In fact, a lot of people don't know this.

Her first stand started in Connecticut.

So after we came to Philadelphia in that treatment worked, she about a month later started talking about having a lemonade standing, which.

Was actually irritating.

Well, it wasn't so much irritating as yeah, maybe a little pestering.

So the first time she mentioned it, she was still pretty sick.

She was in the hospital for an extended stay for another therapy, and I just said, as we all do when you have especially when you have many children.

You know, you put them off sometimes when it's not something that's important to you.

And it was January in Connecticut, so I said, oh, sure, we can have a lemonade stand when you get out of the hospital, when it gets warmer.

But then she would ask every month, and then.

Nobody January is going to be on the street.

And then she persisted for about six months, persisted, and yes, I would say, at times I was a little felt pestered by the lemonade stand talk.

So finally, one day in June of two thousand, she was four and a half.

She was doing pretty well because of the response she had to this.

She still had cancer, but ed reduced it a lot.

She was feeling good.

She said, we still haven't had my lemonade stand.

And now it's hot out.

So she would not like the Memphis heat.

She did not tolerate heat very well.

And now it's too hot.

It's hot out.

And I said, Alex, what do you want to buy?

So badly thinking let's skip the stand and we'll go buy go to this store, get the ten dollars toy and just call it a day.

And she said, I'm not keeping the money.

I'm giving it to my doctor, so they can help kids the way they helped me.

And that's why I believe at four and a half it was born out of that brand.

We told her it was a brand new treatment that helped her and made her feel better, and she wanted other kids to have that same opportunity.

And yes, she was only four and a half.

That in and of a self is extraordinary.

It really is.

And you know, her older brother was similar she was.

She was always sort of beyond her years.

So with the two of them, it it wasn't Actually it was cute to me, and I was surprised, but it wasn't surprising that Alex would come up with that.

But then when I had my two other boys, and I don't know if they're gonna listen to this.

Really they were just normal four year olds, I'm gonna say.

But one day my husband and I, when one of them was four, was like watching them play and they were like being in something on the wall and then like trying to hit their head on the wall maybe to see if it felt different.

And he was like, this is the age she was when she started her lemonade.

Stand and now we have to meet heads.

But they were more I realized and that that was more typical than she was.

But she didn't have a typical life to that point.

And I would say my older son also did not, because he grew up with this.

So you warned her, Okay, fine, Alex, that's sweet because you're being sweet and everything, will have this stupid lemonade stand.

I didn't say it was stupid.

Well i'm my words, and I didn't think it was sack and well you're gonna make ten twenty bucks, just be prepared.

Yes, So I did think right, I didn't think it was it was stupid.

I did think it was really sweet and it was adorable.

That was my main thought was just keep in mind this was two thousand kids weren't doing lemonade stands for charity.

I think that's part of why people gravitated to this idea.

This was this was something Alex helped create for kids, and kids do lemonade stands, not just for us, but for all kinds of causes now so, but mostly I thought, this is so Alex.

She thinks she's going to cure cancer with a lemonade stand.

Isn't that adorable?

And I called my sister, one of my sisters who also has four kids, and said, you know, can you what do you do on Saturday?

Can you come by Alex.

It's having a lemonade stand.

I'm afraid no one's going to show up.

And she's really excited about it.

And as we were hanging up, I said, oh, by the way, she's donating the money to the hospital, and she said, you're kidding me and I said no, like sort of like, isn't that so Alex?

She said, I'm going to call the newspaper and I thought that was the funniest thing.

I was like, no one's going to care about her lemonade stand, and she said, oh, you know in the.

South, what we say about people that have these grandiose ideas that are obviously ridiculous, what bless their hearts?

Yes, exactly, bless her heart.

She's going to hear her cancer with lemonade.

Exactly, it's precious.

Would bless her heart?

And I even you know, thought it.

So we were all about it, right, So we immediately set up that weekend.

My sister ended up calling the paper and she was right.

They did care.

They did a little and you know, you have like back when we had printed newspapers, and everybody read them.

The local section that's like two year geographical part of the city.

They printed something right on the front of that about the little girl having a lemonade stand and donating the money.

And even then we weren't necessarily anticipating that people would come out who we didn't know.

But that morning she she knew, she knew so the night before, of course, she had to get a new lemonade outfit.

The night before, she went to bed in her lemonade clothes because she said, I think it's going to be really busy, and I want to be up early and ready.

So her and her brother, and also keep in mind she was still not a steady walker, but her and her brother got up early the next morning.

Yeah, let's let's keep in mind.

This is a girl who's got no failing in her legs.

Yes and treatments four and a half.

Yes, get you ready for a lemonade?

She gets.

So.

Any of you that can't get up for work on time or school on time, George, if you can't get up for school on time, you remember that.

Okay, she got up early, Say yes, sir, thank you, go ahead, George.

Is Alex's kid, he's.

I think George is an early riser.

I bet George.

Loves to get all right, So here she is, she's going to be.

She gets up early, you know, gets us out of bed early.

She's got to make the lemonade.

Wouldn't you know it?

By seven am, somebody's knocking on the door saying, I know it doesn't start until later, but I'm going out of town and I had to meet you and give you my donation.

And it was NonStop.

I think my husband must have gone out for lemonade.

I don't know how many times that day because we kept running out.

At the end of the day, I honestly thought it was too much for her.

A lot of people don't realize this about her, but she didn't like attention like that.

It wasn't about her.

It almost embarrassed her.

George can probably relate to this.

Made her a little uncomfortable that people were talking about her and asking her for things.

And she was very gracious as a four year old, as gracious as a four year old can be beyond.

But at the end, and it was hot, so I kept thinking how she'd been saying it was too hot, And at the end of the day, I said, what did you think, Alex, thinking this may have been too much for her, and she said it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

She had raised two thousand dollars, and I remember feeling like I was going to cry because I knew then that for all of my sort of not mocking but joking about the lemonade stand that's going to cure cancer, it really meant something to her.

It really meant something to her, so much so that after we moved to Philadelphia she starts talking about having a lemonade sand again.

So Alex passed at eight years and a couple months.

Old, Yes, eight and a half, eight and a half.

And incidentally, everybody, it's July.

I'm not supposed to timestamp because Alex back there gets mad at me about time stamping Alex the producer.

Oh incidentally, if anybody ever gets involved in something we have a producer, you will find out that producers are pains in the butt.

Everybody else likes them, but if you're my shoes.

So anyway, I'm time stamping this for everybody.

Today is July thirtieth.

Alex died in August first, so we are two days from the anniversary of Alex's passing, Yes, and from that four and a half year old, pestering bless her heart, four and a half year old little girl until the day of her passing, this child raised a million.

Dollars she would have an annual lemonade stand.

More and more people heard about it.

It became like a news national news story, and it really lit a fire in her.

And honestly, as she got sicker in two thousand and four, we weren't talking about lemonade.

We knew if she made it to her stand in June that it would be her last stand.

And she decided she was going to raise a million dollars that year before she passed away.

And once again I thought I was sad because I thought this, there's no way she's going to raise a million dollars in this amazing thing.

The thing that ever marked yeah, not even so much bless her Heart, as this incredible thing that she's accomplished is now going to be disappointing because she's not going to reach that ultimate goal.

But when she was asked, she said, if everyone has lemonade stands, I think we can do it.

And it became this amazing call to action, and that turned into a movement of lemonade stands, all happening at the same time to help her reach her goal.

And by the middle of July we were able to tell her she would reach her goal, and she passed away not even two weeks later.

So she was obviously holding on to see that goal met, and she was very determined that things were going to be different for kids after her than they were for her, into a certain level of stubbornness, and I would say, almost like a fixation on meeting this goal.

Even when we were saying things like you're too sick to travel to do that interview, It's okay if you don't go to the stand, you don't have to do this, she would just shut it down and say I have to do this.

And that concludes part one of my conversation with Liz Scott, and you don't want to miss part two that now I'm.

Able to listen to.

Together, guys, we can change this country and it starts with you.

I'll see you in part two.