STINGCANCER encourages community to wear yellow

GREEN BAY, Wis. (WBAY) - Northeast Wisconsin will be a glow of yellow Friday... that is if an Ashwaubenon man’s vision is fulfilled.

“That’s kind of what I’m known as... the Sting Cancer guy.”

On top of being a husband, dad of four and longtime educator, Nick Nesvacil has become the guy who turned his story of beating brain cancer into a movement. A movement embraced by Northeast Wisconsin.

“It is our eighteenth Wear Yellow Day, our nineteenth year of Sting Cancer. So we have 35 groups with many kids involved,” STINGCANCER Founder Nesvacil said.

Over nearly two decades, thousands of students in nearly three dozen schools and countless more community members have looked to the beginning of May. The month signifies strangers uniting to rally around those fighting cancer and friends and family who support them through a simple gesture... wearing yellow.

Friday, May 6 is Wear Yellow Day.

“I had no idea... no idea... but obviously the growth of it just shows what my initial reason for starting it was. There’s so many people touched by cancer. You can’t walk around a school and somebody asks you about your scars or your bald head. Immediately they have a neighbor, a cousin, a mom or grandma that went through cancer. It’s just affected everybody.”

Nesvacil started Sting Cancer 19 years ago when he was a teacher at Green Bay Preble High School. He used the school’s colors and mascot to cleverly start a group... all kids with personal connections to cancer.

They formed a bond with Nesvacil—who seven years prior began rigorous treatments to remove a brain tumor.

Those intense treatments created some recent health challenges for him. Even though he’s no longer teaching, he’s made the community his classroom.

Seeing the students make care packages supporting cancer survivors is what makes his heart shine.

“It is very proud. I think students can learn life lessons that you can’t learn in the classroom,” Nesvacil expressed. “And they’re able to get a lot of experience in the real world and they’re also able to help so many people. It’s not about me. It’s about the network of people that have just wanted to jump on with what we’re doing because they know it’s awesome for the students and awesome for the adults too.”

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