Journalist. He was a New York newspaper columnist, reporter, and short story author, who is best known today for the Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Cancer Fund. Runyon was a three-pack-a-day smoker and when he eventually succumbed to throat cancer related to his nicotine abuse, his friend Walter Winchell made a radio appeal for money to fight the disease. In the 21st century, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundations funds over 150 cancer research projects each year and has offered $3.9 million worth of scholarship for research. Alfred Damon Runyan was born, the only son of four children, in Manhattan, Kansas, a town founded by his pioneer grandfather. After his mother's death, he was taken to Colorado to live with his father, a newspaper man, while his sisters stayed in Kansas with various relatives. He had a difficult childhood, leaving formal education after the sixth grade and by age 15, starting to work at the newspaper with his father. While serving in the Spanish-American War, he began writing with the articles "Manila Freedom" and "Soldier's Letter." After working for a couple of newspapers in Colorado, he relocated to New York City and for decades, he wrote sports as well as general news articles for newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst Sr. He earned nationwide fame as a newspaper columnist and feature writer. He received permanent recognition in American literature from his short stories of Broadway characters such as gangsters, chorus girls, gamblers, bookies and has-been athletes. This collection provided the title and story line for one of the masterpieces of the American musical theatre as well as film, "Guys and Dolls." Upon his death, he was cremated, and World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker carried out his wishes by scattering his ashes from an airplane over Broadway. Then the plane continued up to the Bronx and banked over the Runyon family plot at historic Woodlawn Cemetery where his first wife was interred. He was married twice and had two children with his first wife before her death in 1931. His second marriage ended in divorced. Since 1994, the coveted Damon Runyon Award is given annually by Denver Press Club to the journalist, who best exemplifies the style that made Runyon one of the best columnists of his day.