Kevin Patula (left) and Chris Fusco at Paw Paw Lake in Michigan, July 2025
Kevin Patula and Chris Fusco became close friends in first grade. More than 45 years later, they’re navigating a diagnosis that neither saw coming — and running 26.2 miles to fight back.
The bond between Kevin and Chris was molded in basements and ballfields, a small world that revolved around a three-quarter-mile radius in Alsip, a suburb of Chicago. They invented games like “hockey golf” — whiffle balls and hockey sticks on a linoleum floor, taking enough chunks out of the ceiling to eventually get caught. They played sock football with balls made of masking tape and pantyhose.
“I’m an only child,” Chris says. “Kevin became my family.”
That family bond meant Chris walked into the Patula household like it was his own. Kevin’s mother kept a refrigerator door that served as a community bulletin board. If you made the paper — for a sport, a spelling bee, whatever — you were on that refrigerator. “It was her way of saying that you were part of the family.”
Kevin Patula, Chris Fusco, and Jim Reed in the 6th grade
They carried that connection into adulthood. Kevin and Chris were roommates at Illinois Wesleyan University. They’ve “annoyed the bejesus out of each other over the years,” Chris says. “That’s when you know you have a close friend — seeing you through your faults and sticking around.”
Today, Kevin lives in Frankfort with his wife, Bridget, and their three daughters, Emily, Molly, and Caitlin. Chris is the executive editor of The Sacramento Bee in California.
In the fall of 2023, Kevin started losing the pinching grip in his right hand. He couldn’t turn keys in doors or flip a lamp switch. On March 22, 2024, after doctors had run tests to rule out other possibilities, the diagnosis was confirmed: ALS.
“That was obviously a shock to the system,” says Kevin.
Since the diagnosis, Kevin and his family are planning ahead. They’ve moved into a townhouse where everything he needs is on one level. They’ve redone the showers.
“I’m just trying to take it a day at a time,” Kevin says. “As they say in the sports world, we’re all day-to-day.” More than two years in, the disease is progressing relatively slowly. He can still walk, though there’s a limp. His arms feel heavy, but he can still use them. “A severe case of FOMO is what gets me through this.”
Chris is a runner. Kevin is decidedly not. “I will only run if chased,” he chuckles.
This year’s Chicago Marathon will be different. Chris is running as part of Team Race for ALS with the Les Turner ALS Foundation, raising funds and awareness in Kevin’s honor.
“For me, this is not going to be trying to set a world land speed record,” Chris says. “It’s going to be finishing in one piece and using the marathon as a vehicle to spread awareness and raise funds.”
His fundraising strategy is simple: keep telling the story. He’ll post about his training — the logged miles, the long weekend runs. But he’ll also post about Kevin’s training: breathing checks, physical therapy, the daily work of staying as healthy as possible.
Kevin wants people to understand that while finding a cure is the ultimate goal, there are needs right now — financial support, equipment, resources that help people living with ALS get through each day. That practical support has been vital.
Rochelle Walwer, LCSW, Kevin’s support services coordinator through the Les Turner ALS Foundation, helped connect him with care at Northwestern Medicine. She’s guided him through questions about portable wheelchairs, home accommodations, voice banking, and talk-to-text technology.
Kevin focuses on what’s in front of him: his daughters, his wife, and his friends who’ve asked from the beginning, “What can we do?”
“For someone like me dealing with this disease, just knowing you have support like that — it’s sort of overwhelming,” Kevin says. “That Chris wants to run 26.2 on my behalf, God bless him. It goes a long way to helping people like me who want to go longer, want to persist, and go as long as I can.”
