Peter McGee Hoffman was always on the move. An athlete and adventurer, he excelled in crew and cross-country in high school. At the George Washington University, where he received a four-year Presidential scholarship and earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, he played Ultimate Frisbee.
After his graduation in 2007, Mr. Hoffman traveled to Australia for a seven-month adventure. Gregarious and well-liked, he worked for a moving company and a hostel in Sydney to finance a life of exploration, skydiving, surfing and scuba diving.
But when he returned to England, where his family lived, he found that a small sore had developed on his tongue. The diagnosis was catastrophic. The sore was the result of an aggressive form of oral cancer. Mr. Hoffman died seven months later. He was 24.
“He was one of those people who didn’t like to waste any of his days,” said his older sister Kaitlin Caruso.
That didn’t change with his diagnosis. While fighting his disease, Mr. Hoffman planned a walk to raise awareness of oral cancer.
Ms. Caruso, who in 2014 earned her master’s degree from GW’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development, and her family—including her parents, husband, and sister Colleen Hoffman, a current student in the project management program at the School of Business—are now carrying out his plan. The Oral Cancer Foundation 5K Walk/Run in Memory of Peter McGee Hoffman will take place April 18, at Meadowbrook Park in Chevy Chase, Md.
In addition to helping raise money for research and awareness via the nonprofit Oral Cancer Foundation (OCF), participants will have access to free oral cancer screenings by local dentists and hygienists.
Peter Hoffman with his sisters, Colleen Hoffman and Kaitlin Caruso. (Photo courtesy Kaitlin Caruso)
The timing has a double significance for the Hoffmans: March 28 was the sixth anniversary of Mr. Hoffman’s death, and April is Oral Cancer Awareness month. According to the OCF, the disease is particularly dangerous because it is frequently not discovered, as in Mr. Hoffman’s case, until its later stages—often after metastasizing to other locations.
“If oral cancer is found early enough there is a good chance of survival,” Ms. Caruso said. “But because so many people don’t know about it, or are unaware of the warning signs, they let things go unchecked: a sore on their tongue, or a persistent cough, something like that, they don’t think anything of it and they leave it too long.”
The disease kills roughly one person in the United States every hour—more than 8,600 deaths each year, according to the Oral Cancer Foundation.
Her brother wouldn’t have accepted that status quo, Ms. Caruso said.
“He had a scientific mind, and he cared deeply about people,” she said. “For him, it was at least partly an engineering problem. This terrible thing has happened—how do we fix it so that others don’t have to suffer?”
The solution Mr. Hoffman envisaged wasn’t to the problem of saving his own life. It was preventing other families from going through what his had endured.
“Being part of GW was a really important part of Peter’s life,” Ms. Caruso said. “It would mean a lot to him that this message can be passed on to that community of people.”
For information on Saturday's event, please visit peterswalkrun.com.