Jason Capel Is Still Fighting The Disease That Took His Father’s Life

The former Tar Heel is doing something all of us can support and be proud of.

Sunday evening we opened Twitter and one of the first tweets was heartbreaking: a man posted a simple message saying my fight with ALS is over. Please don’t be sad. Life is beautiful.

We looked a little bit more and saw that he was apparently typing by blinking at the end,

It turns out when you type ALS battle is over, you get a stunning number of hits.

Then we saw this article about Jeff Capel, Jr., who was diagnosed in 2016 and died in 2017.

His sons, Jeff III, who went to Duke, and Jason, who attended UNC a few years later, know what a terribly destructive disease ALS is, and if you aren’t familiar, just search Twitter for ALS and you’ll see. It’s profoundly difficult.

Jason has worked with the United States Basketball Association and hosted camps for young players to raise money for the Jeff Capel, Jr. Fund.

It’s back again, this time at Fayetteville State.

Capel Jr. by all accounts was a good man who should still be with us. Knowing that he had such a difficult death still stings. We hope the Capel Fund does well and that someday, we can be rid of this scourge.