Features
When Brother Steve Garraty walked into the Sigma Nu house at the University of Georgia as a first-year student, he carried a secret that only a couple of his future brothers would ever know. Only months earlier, Garraty had endured a battle for his life. At just 18 years old, he had been diagnosed with stage three Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
What followed was nearly a year of chemotherapy that tested his endurance, reshaped his perspective, and ultimately became the foundation for the man, husband, father, friend, leader, and author he would become.
“I was diagnosed on July 4th after graduating high school with Hodgkin’s, which is a form of cancer. At 18, you think you’re invincible. I thought cancer was for old people. And I really had no concern at all that it was going to be cancer, but it turned out that it was,” Garraty stated.
A Year of Hell
The diagnosis came after years of self-destructive choices. Moving between cities during childhood had left Garraty unsettled socially. By middle school, he was experimenting with alcohol and drugs, and by his senior year of high school, he admits, his life was spiraling.
“I was partying at levels that were not sustainable,” he recalled. “All I cared about and all that was important was my social life back then.”
“I like to say that God intervened,” Garraty shared. “I’m not sure if God gave me cancer, but it did force me onto a different, much better path.”
Cancer forced a reckoning. The large mass on his neck and the additional masses in his chest and stomach required nearly ten months of chemotherapy. “Usually about halfway through each chemo session I was vomiting uncontrollably. And then that would last for about 12 hours,” Garraty explained. “The nausea, the hair loss, and the loneliness were brutal. The worst part though was the mental part of cancer… each week it progressively got worse, the physical impact snowballed, the side effects continued to increase in frequency and severity. It wore me down. Towards the end, there were a number of times where I just thought about throwing in the towel.”
But Garraty persevered. He endured the treatments, marked the passage of time in two-week increments, and eventually heard the words “cancer free.” He had survived, but not unchanged.
A Wake-Up Call
Reflecting on that season, Garraty has often described the illness as both a tragedy and a blessing. In college, a conversation with a pledge brother about the holiday film It’s a Wonderful Life crystallized the metaphor.
“For me, that movie began to change my perspective,” Garraty explained. “In the movie, the main character, George Bailey, is given a glimpse of what life would be like without him. For me, cancer was kind of a glimpse or a wake-up call. Clarence was the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life who granted George this glimpse. I like to say that my Clarence was cancer, certainly a much more difficult and painful experience, maybe not a nice angel, if you will, but it was a wake-up call for me.”
That wake-up call instilled a perspective that would guide him for the rest of his life.
Finding Sigma Nu
When Garraty arrived in Athens, he knew a fraternity was part of his plan. “I always knew I wanted to join a fraternity,” he said. “Before cancer, maybe I had different motivations for joining. But after cancer, I definitely wanted to still be in a fraternity, and I knew those friendships would be really important. And it was a great way to meet a ton of people.”
Going through recruitment quickly introduced him to a group that felt like home. “Just everybody I met… it felt like home. Sigma Nu just felt like home in Athens,” Garraty said. “We had about 120 active brothers each year, and I just thought it was great. It was a mix of people from South Georgia, from Atlanta, from Charlotte. We had some people from other parts of the country, and so you got a good, diverse group of people from different backgrounds. But that’s why I joined Sigma Nu.”
Among his pledge brothers was John Hearn, who would later serve as Regent of the Fraternity. Garraty also stepped into leadership roles during his time in the chapter, further cementing friendships and lessons that remain with him today.
Quiet Strength
Despite the magnitude of his ordeal, Garraty rarely shared his cancer experience with his chapter brothers. “When the book initially launched, I had some Sigma Nus read it, and they’re like, ‘I had no idea that you had cancer, that you went through this months before we became friends” Garraty explained. “I think I shared it with one or two pledge brothers in the first week or two weeks being up at school… and it rattled them. I just made a decision that I was just going to keep it to myself. I didn’t need to really share it.”
The choice reflected his desire for a fresh start. He wanted to experience college as a normal student, not as “the cancer patient.”
Perspective and Brotherhood
Looking back, Garraty credits Sigma Nu with giving him a joyful, grounding community after the darkest year of his life. “I went from a year of hell to this euphoria of being in Athens, with 120 friends, going to Georgia football games and tailgating, and having the time of my life. It was surreal. I held some leadership roles in the Fraternity and built so many meaningful friendships with all my closest friends being Sigma Nus,” he said. “To this day, I still take annual trips with Sigma Nus and see many of them regularly, even though I live down in Florida now.”
The gratitude that cancer instilled in him was magnified by fraternity life. “As it relates to brotherhood and joining Sigma Nu, I do feel like there was a heightened level of appreciation that I had every day,” Garraty reflected. “Perspective would be the biggest [lesson]… having gratitude for family, for friends, making sure that I do a really good job of maintaining contact with people, building relationships, but then maintaining them.”
The Book: Greatfruit
That emphasis on perspective and gratitude is central to Garraty’s book, Greatfruit: How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Life. The title itself carries special significance.
“The title of my book… came from a friend I worked with for a year out of college,” Garraty recounted. “I couldn’t come up with a name for my book. We got together for drinks after not having seen each other for over twenty years. Again, the importance of maintaining friendships. He read the book and gave me a list of titles, but I loved Greatfruit because I had a mass taken out of my neck, the surgeon said was the size of a grapefruit, and the cancer ended up being a blessing. So, he combined those two aspects of my story to come up with that title.”
The book outlines Garraty’s journey, but more importantly, it offers practical takeaways for readers facing their own challenges. “Everything in the book, as far as how it impacted me and made me a better father, a better husband, a better friend, a better business leader, sales leader, I would say it all falls under perspective,” he said. “The biggest lesson that I got from cancer was just the perspective and how I was going to view that experience.”
A Message for Brothers
For Garraty, the lessons of his life and his fraternity experience come down to investing in relationships and embracing perspective. “My philosophy is you can’t have enough of those people in your life, especially when you are hit with life’s biggest hurdles,” he said. “If I’ve got a really good friendship from 30-something years ago, I go out of my way to try to keep that friendship active and maintain it. Building and maintaining my network is a core value for me.”
It is a philosophy born of hardship but nurtured in brotherhood. From chemotherapy to Sanford Stadium tailgates, Garraty has lived the reality that adversity and joy can coexist, and that life’s good fruit is found in perspective and relationships.
Get Your Copy
Brother Garraty’s Book, Greatfruit: How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Life, launched on March 11, 2025, and is available for purchase on online retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Visit www.stevegarraty.com for more information. Listen to the full interview with Steve on the Fraternity's The Gavel Podcast.