Roger Daltrey in the surf near the Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan this week (Mavrixphoto.com/Special to Page2Live)
For all the evil at the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach earlier this week, when a Holocaust denier’s lecture was disrupted by a bloody fight between two followers, there was plenty of good will.
That came courtesy of Roger Daltrey, the voice of the British rock band The Who.
The pop culture icon, 65, who’s been resting here while on break from his solo tour, met a couple from New Jersey staying in the hotel lobby and ended up in a hour-long conversation that the duo, Joe and Joan Vrola, won’t soon forget.
The topic was the Vrolas’ 22-year-old son, Joey, who just came out of a bout with cancer. Teen cancer happens to be what Daltrey calls his life’s work. He started the Teenage Cancer Trust in England and funds the work of the foundation yearly with a week-long series of concerts at the famous Royal Albert Hall in London.
By the end of the chat, Joan Vrola was in tears in Daltrey’s arms. Finally, someone understood!
“This was probably the most therapeutic conversation we had with anyone since our son was diagnosed (three years ago),” Joe Vrola said. “Our son is doing much better physically, but he’s not the same kid. There’s an anguish associated with the disease that teens, especially, need to deal with.
“Bad things happen to them when it comes to drinking and drugs and isolation. The hospital may be good at curing, but they provide no psychological counseling. No one in this country seems to understand that, but Roger Daltrey does.”
Daltrey’s Trust indeed provides counseling and moral support to afflicted teens.
Hours later, Daltrey was on the phone with the Vrolas’ son, who at first didn’t know anything about Daltrey. Hope, Vrola said, is what Daltrey was passing on.
“Besides close family, there aren’t too many people who actually care,” Joe Vrola said. “But here you have this total stranger who does.”
“That’s Roger,” said his friend in West Palm Beach, Realtor Leslie Linder. “He wants to change the world one person at a time.”
Joe Vrola wanted to know why Daltrey made teenage cancer his cause, so he asked the singer of Behind Blue Eyes, Who Are You and Pinball Wizard if any of his nine children ever had the disease.
“He said no,”Vrola said,“but his answer had the hair on the back of my neck stand straight. He said teens made him what he is. They were his biggest fans. He said he just wants to give back to those who supported him all these years.”
