Ken Cleary's whole career has been about adapting to change. As UNC's associate AD of Go Heels productions he's always adjusting to a rapidly evolving industry. That mindset helped prepare him for the fight of his life. The UNC athletics community made sure he didn't fight it alone.
Yeah. And now we just sit and wait. The only constant for Ken Cleary is change us. They're all remote control cameras in our, in our, in our room in there. He's the associate athletic director for Go Heels productions at UN C. So this is a Carolina Insider right now. He's directing a video podcast time for another edition of the Carolina Insider Jones and Adam here on game day, I just, uh checking in on our intercom systems. You'll see him managing the in house video production. Yeah, I'm sort of the one with the script here that's sort of calling what's coming up next. The job looks a little different than when he started in 2001. It's hard to really put words around it. So does Kent put it on it? Just sort of slides right on like that. You see a prosthetic leg. He just sees another way he needs to adapt. Uh I also have a Fall risk bracelet, um, which my, my wife Jill insists I really need to, uh, stop wearing next to Ken's Fall Risk bracelet is one for strikeout Sarcoma. I'd had some, uh, weird uh lesion on my leg in June of 2023 Tess revealed that the mark on his shin was a rare form of cancer in his blood vessels called angiosarcoma. It, it's just the shock and the disbelief and this can't be, you know, this isn't that can't, it can't be that serious. I'm fine from day one, the topic of surgery was discussed, sat in the examination room in the hospital and said if, if I have to lose my leg to live, then, yeah, there's not really much of a question. A month later, his leg was amputated from the mid thigh down. I'm 54 years old. And so my brain's been used to doing things in a certain way for 54 years. Um, so you have to retrain your brain. It took 3.5 months for him to get his prosthetic. All right. Everything looks good out here in just three weeks to return to work. Oh, nice. That's where he received schoolwide support from people like athletic director, Bubba Cunningham. My heart fills up right now when I think about it, nothing changed with Ken, whether or not he had two legs or one leg, it didn't change his, his attitude, his demeanor, his professionalism, his warmth, his love of what he does and with who he does it with is just something that's extraordinary and it's a, it's a life lesson for all of us there you have and Director of basketball Operations, Eric hoots when, when he did find out I reached out to him and just said, you know, hey, I just wanna let you know that we're here for you, but we need you back like I need you back here to help, help us and let him know how much we appreciate what he does. And um it was definitely a tough time. He had a role model in the building too. Obviously, Eric Matros is somebody that, that we all cared for here. He was checking in on me constantly and he's going through treatment and he just text me to see how things were going. The beloved UN C big man and radio analyst died of cancer in December, the podcast. Um, they have, uh, a saying at the end, uh, see you later. Big grits. So I just wear that to try to remember Eric. He lost a friend. His leg has just been an adjustment. I'm incredibly lucky. Yeah. Sometimes I gotta relearn how to walk, but I can still walk, uh, the people that are going through it, going through cancer treatments. You know, it's, it's hard and I'm lucky to, to, to be where I am and, and I'll deal with the, the minor inconvenience. Oh, first.