Tim Cahill & Co. representing the Blues in the @ASCannes1902 Legends football tournament! 💙 📹 @Tim_Cahill

If you were young in 2001, or weren’t even born yet, it can be hard to imagine what 9/11 felt like. The shock of that beautiful, cloudless morning. The heartbreak of the families whose loved ones were taken with such swiftness and cruelty. The realization that the forces of malevolence and violence were closer, and the future less certain, than we knew. But in the days that followed, we felt something else, too. Pride in the rescue workers who had rushed to the scene, and the passengers who had stormed the cockpit. Admiration for the men and women who left behind lives of comfort to serve their country. A deep resolve that nothing would break the will of a truly United States of America. Today Michelle and I are remembering those we lost that day, and those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the wars that followed. We pray for their families. And we hope Americans everywhere remember the true lesson of 9/11: that we can survive even our darkest days as long as we move forward as one nation and one people.

When Bobby Robson finished his final chemotherapy session in 2007, he had already been fighting cancer for years. As he prepared to leave hospital after the treatment, his oncologist Dr Ruth Plummer asked if she could have a quiet word with him. Bobby assumed it was about his health. Ruth explained that her department desperately needed help. Their cancer trials unit was old and outdated, while a new facility was being built at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle. It would be three times the size, with a state-of-the-art laboratory for early cancer trials, new treatments and drug research. The building was there. They just didn’t have the money to equip it. Ruth wanted to know whether Bobby knew anyone who might be able to help. Bobby went home and spoke to his wife Elsie. The following day, they started making phone calls. Former Newcastle chief executive Freddie Fletcher became involved, along with businessman Michael Hogan, Don Robson, Carol Beverley, Ruth and Bobby’s secretary Judith Horey. What had started as a conversation at the end of a chemotherapy session quickly became a committee. Their first meeting was held just before Christmas. It was there that somebody suggested the obvious. Put Bobby’s name on it. Bobby didn’t particularly like the idea of having a charity named after himself, but the others convinced him that his name could open doors and help them raise the money much quicker. The Sir Bobby Robson Foundation was born. And once Bobby agreed, there was no chance he was going to sit quietly in the background. “If I’m committed to something, then I’m committed.” At their meeting with the hospital, Don Robson asked exactly how much they needed to get the new unit running. £500,000. Bobby had no idea whether people would donate or whether he was going to have to spend months trying to find the money himself. But they committed to raising every penny. Bobby was originally supposed to be little more than the figurehead. That plan lasted about as long as you would expect. He attended every meeting, threw himself into the fundraising and occasionally pulled Ruth to one side. “What have you bloody well got me into?” Within seven weeks, they had raised £560,000. And one of the first people to arrive with money showed Bobby exactly what the Foundation had already come to mean. Shortly after its formation was announced, a woman knocked on the door of Bobby and Elsie’s home carrying an envelope. Her husband had recently died. Before his death, he had asked his family not to spend money on flowers for his funeral. Instead, he wanted the mourners to make a collection for Bobby’s new cancer charity. His widow had come to deliver it personally. £271.74. “What can you say to that?” People stopped Bobby in the street and pushed £5 and £10 notes into his hands. Towards the end of the 2007/08 season, he went to watch Sunderland play Middlesbrough and was sitting near the back of the directors’ box. As he got up to leave, two elderly supporters in the next section shouted over. “Hey, hey, Bobby!” One handed him £20. The other gave him £10. Bobby had spent his life associated with Newcastle United, but neither man cared about that. “At that moment, there was no thought of north-east rivalry.” At another fundraising dinner at St James’ Park, Bobby ended the night with his pockets stuffed with notes, cheques and loose change. A couple approached him before they left. The woman was crying and her husband was struggling to hold back his own tears. Their son was Jordan Thompson, a Newcastle Academy player who had died only a few months earlier. He was fifteen. They had bought a table at Bobby’s dinner because, after losing their own boy, they wanted to help his Foundation. Bobby struggled to know what to say to them. “Cancer has shown me the best of people.” Bobby had spent his life at Newcastle, Ipswich, England, PSV, Porto and Barcelona. But during the final years of his life, this became another part of what he wanted to leave behind. “I’ve written that I bleed black and white.” “But cancer takes no account of colour.” “I’ve had a life in football and left a legacy with that.” “But this is just as important to me.” As of today the Sir Bobby Robson foundation has raised over £25 million. #football