Last Lecture Author's Son Storms Capitol Hill

You know Randy Pausch. The terminally ill Carnegie Mellon professor's "Last Lecture" might be both the most heart-breaking and soul-mending life lesson of the YouTube era — having spread from viral video to best-selling book before he succumbed to cancer two years ago. (See the video that started it all, below.)

You probably don’t know his son, Dylan, though you might remember the youngster as one of three little big reasons his father fought so hard in a doomed battle against pancreatic cancer. Two years after his father’s death, 8-year-old Dylan is now picking up where his dad left off.

On June 22, Dylan appeared with his mom Jai on Capitol Hill, where during his final days two years earlier, Randy asked congress to devote dollars to a desperately underfunded cause. Pancreatic cancer, the fourth most lethal cancer in the United States, is the "least federally funded of all leading cancer killers,” according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. It receives less than 2 percent of the National Cancer Institute’s annual budget.

“So many people are dying from pancreatic cancer and the survival rates are so low,” Dylan told ABC News as he visited Congress last month. “If we keep studying, we might be able to change that.”

Dylan’s words echoed those his dad said before the Labor, Health & Human Services Subcommittee. “We don’t have an advocate for this disease because they don’t live long enough.”

The savvy lecturer brought out a photo of his family and pointed his sharpie at Dylan. “He’s six years old and he loves dinosaurs.”

Dylan might still love dinosaurs, but he probably always loved his dad more. Today, he can show it and he did as he took the microphone at the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network Advocacy Day during his recent trip to D.C. Unfortunately his words weren’t recorded, though they probably sounded something like his dad’s.

“Pancreatic disease is a disease that I think we can beat,” Randy said in the same city in 2008. “But it’s going to take more continued courage and funding from our government to help protect us from the things that we can’t protect ourselves from.”

Randy Pausch always said he was just a human face to put attention on the disease. It’s good to know there’s now a fresh face filling in.

Click to donate to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

Photo by the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.