Friends Bob D’Angelo and Mike Boissonneault co-founded the Find A Cure Together nonprofit more than a decade ago in Connecticut to help support the V Foundation and the fight against cancer through research.
D’Angelo, a 70-year-old Southington native and a basketball coach, had admiration for the founder of the V Foundation, the late NC State basketball coach Jim Valvano, and he wanted to add to the fight.
“It became a point in my life where I had lost many dear friends to cancer. Being a basketball nut, I said to myself, ‘You know what? What better way for me to find something to give back on was through Jim Valvano.’ I, just like a lot of people, remember exactly where I was the night of that first speech, which was the greatest speech ever,” D’Angelo said.
“The primary reason was the passion to figure out a charity that I wanted to put my heart into and give back,” he added.
D’Angelo said his love of basketball and the fact that the V Foundation gives 100% of funds to cancer research compelled him to help.
The first Voices for Victory Dinner was held at Trinity College in 2015 with 120 people and raised between $5,000 and $6,000. Annual attendance has nearly tripled in the decade since.
Longtime ESPN executive George Bodenheimer, who was one of the founding members of the V Foundation, was the events first speaker.
“From that point I was thinking, ‘I’m going to do this and I’m going to make it bigger and bigger and bigger as we go every year. And I got to be thankful to a lot of people like Mike and other friends on my team and other network people that they all reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, if you want to do this and you want to make a bigger, we’re in to help you. And so, here I am 10 years later, and we’re, you know, we’re going try to blow this thing up,” D’Angelo said.
Boissonneault, the 67-year-old lifelong Southington resident, said the event has grown from a handful of sponsors to 40 or 50 each year .
“We’ve never really pursued the real heavy, heavy hitters. This has always been a lot of grassroots. Mom and pop shops, because I always kept it as like a networking thing. The is goal now is to expand this thing to start to get like the big boys involved, where we get two or three major, major sponsors at $25,000 to $50,000. It’s going to make a huge difference,” Boissonneault said.
Boissonneault, a longtime ESPN employee in production and operations, said FACT has donated more than $500,000 in total contributions, and attendance for the yearly events has swelled to 300 people. He said a core group has come back each year to their events.
“We’re here in Connecticut for a reason because that’s where we do business,” Boissonneault said. “Bob has been so convincing that the relationships that you forge, they are authentic, and that’s how we conduct our business as well. We connect businesses together with us and with others, and we’re constantly making these connections. So, it’s not a black-tie event by any stretch. It’s really a good business networking with a great common cause.”
Boissonneault said he followed Valvano as a college coach then met him when he was an analyst for the ESPN. He added that the speech Valvano gave at the ESPY’s in 1993 has been in inspiration for more than three decades.
“One of the nicest people to deal with because you could approach him and ask him questions and he would break things down in way I could understand,” Boissonneault said. “But 10 years after being the youngest coach to win the championship, he was battling for his life with cancer. And the grace and the humility and the perseverance he showed us was like mind blowing. He knew, I think, deep down, this will not end in the long run for him, but he wanted to leave something for his family, for his players, for his, you know, for the greater good and the larger group.”
Boissonneault said cancer hit home a few years ago when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“Within 10 minutes of a call to get out of a meeting to tell me what her diagnosis was, and I walked outside to my car, George Bodenheimer was standing waiting for me at my car,” Boissonneault said. “He’s the president and a CEO of the company. There’s 4,000 people (working) in Bristol at the time, and he’s standing at my car waiting for me and he handed me a note. And on the note was the name of a doctor from North Carolina State who was part of the early V Foundation board and one of the doctors and scientists in charge of breast cancer at the time.
“He said to call this doctor when you get home and set up an appointment and let me know how it goes,” he added. “It’s hard not to feel emotion thinking about it now. It didn’t matter who you were in the company and it’s that type of situation that the V Foundation is there for.”
Bodenheimer said “not a month went by where someone from the company wasn’t afflicted by this terrible disease.”
“Through our ESPN connection with the V Foundation, we were able to start helping people, connect with doctors, reaffirming your care plan, and that sort of thing,” Bodenheimer said. “It turned out to be just a wonderful way to assist people in a time of need. So that’s what the V Foundation does.”
Boissonneault said his wife was treated at Yale New Haven Medical Center.
“Every family is touched by cancer. Whether it’s yours, your sibling, your spouse, your kids, your grandparents, whoever it may be, your friends, it’s a common cause that runs through everyone,” D’Angelo said. “I think Mike and I can give you 100 stories just like his wife. Just to have that comfort where you have the best of the best and what they do in research and scientific and doctors that you can make a phone call, you don’t know how much that means to a person. And I’ve witnessed it personally, and I’ve also witnessed it through Mike, and I’ve also witnessed it through several other people on our team.”
D’Angelo said this past year’s keynote speaker, ABC Sports and ESPN on-air talent Holly Rowe, gave an impassioned speech about her battle with cancer.
“Everybody respects her,” D’Angelo said. “What she went through personally was an awful, awful experience of having cancer and being someone who’s on air and a talent and all that on television, and she decided I’m going to do my job because my job is most important to me. When she told her story there was not a dry eye in the house.”
Jason Perrone, who attended the first FACT event and has been a part of the event planning ever since, said he is proud that 100% of the funds go directly to the V Foundation.
Perrone is the director of strategy and marketing for NDC Commercial Construction, Inc., a construction group based in Plainville. He said he was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2019.
“I had aggressive chemo and I probably should have got checked earlier and it was a little scary and I personally benefited, I’m not saying the V necessarily saved me, but I benefited from the knowledge, the experience and the know-how that the doctors now have,” Perrone said. “You hear that word cancer, and I never get cocky with it to say, ‘Hey, I beat cancer.’ I’m not going to wear that shirt because I feel like it’s listening. But the fact is, is when we ask people to stand up in the crowd to say anyone has had cancer, and then we ask anyone you know has or had cancer, the whole crowd stands. Every single person has been affected by cancer in some sense, probably more than once have done themselves. And we are having success. I’m a survivor.”
Bodenheimer has been a personal advisor for the FACT missions and annual fundraising event each year.
“Mike and I were colleagues at ESPN, and he introduced me to Bob D’Angelo,” Bodenheimer said. “Bob and I became friends, and I became involved in this event about 10 years ago. … This is really a labor of love for Bob, his family and friends. It’s really a grassroots effort that has grown into a substantial fundraiser not only for the V Foundation but for the greater Bristol/Hartford area.”
Bodenheimer said he’s proud of what FACT has accomplished.
“In 2014 we decide a local event under the direction of someone local could help people,” Bodenheimer said. “I’m happy to play a role. My role is a minor role. Bob and Mike do the heavy lifting. It just it means a lot to me to be able to play a small role in helping them help other people. Unfortunately, virtually every family in America is touched in some way by cancer, certainly if you include family and friends, it’s every family. This work is close to home for a lot of people, and then people involved in this event, including, a couple that have been lost. It’s, it’s a serious disease and these are serious people trying to make serious progress, and they’re doing it”
Marina Wood , said she met D’Angelo decades ago working together. She decided to attend the Voices for Victory dinner one year and was moved.
“I was memorized by the whole thing,” Wood said. “I’ve had special people in my life who have dealt with cancer, and who have some survived, some did not. It was kind of a unique twist on things that this went to research at all types of cancer. When I talked to him at the end of the night, I said, ‘Sign me up, I would love to do this because you feel so hopeless.’”
About two years ago, Wood’s 32-year-old son Kevin was diagnosed with Stage 4 liver cancer.
“I was in such shock and disbelief that I called Bob and told him, and he put me in touch with a doctor from the V Foundation,” Wood said. “She took the time to call with a Zoom meeting with my husband and myself and explain his cancer, which is a very advanced very fast. … We owe a lot of gratitude to that doctor.”
Wood said Kevin’s latest scans show that nothing is growing and immunotherapy will continue. If scans show anything suspicious, she said, he will go back into chemotherapy.
“Had it not been for the V Foundation helping us navigate this disaster in our family, I’m not quite sure we’d be right now,” Wood said. “Just being a part of fundraising for the V Foundation gives me that sense of I’m making a little bit of difference by raising funds that will go toward research.”
The next Voices for Victory dinner will be held on April 20, 2026, at the Aqua Turf, 556 Mulberry St., Plantsville. For tickets or sponsorships, contact Bob D’Angelo at bobjdangelo@gmail.com or 860-573-1150.