Sharing the joy of childhood

Mark Rybczyk gives his time, talents and resources to support our patients

Mark Rybczyk is best known across North Texas as “Hawkeye,” the award-winning radio personality on New Country 96.3. At Cook Children’s, he’s more than a local celebrity; he’s family.

Mark’s involvement with Cook Children’s didn’t start at the hospital. In fact, it started in his front yard.

“It was in the early 2000s,” Mark said. “I talked to a neighbor I hadn’t seen in a while, and I asked him where he’d been all week. He told me about Camp Sanguinity, and that he’d been a counselor for the week. I said I’d been a camp counselor in high school, and I wanted to get involved.”

The next year, Mark volunteered to spend a week at Camp Sanguinity, our summer camp for kids battling cancer. The experience gave him a deeper understanding of what pediatric cancer patients must endure. Mark volunteered for several more summers and even served on the board before taking a step back to focus on his family, but he never forgot the patients and staff he met at our camp.

In 2013, with his Camp Sanguinity experience in his heart, Mark partnered with his fellow New Country 96.3 DJs Terry Dorsey and Michelle Rodriguez to host the inaugural Cook Children’s Radiothon.

“It’s grown so much since then,” Mark said. “Now we have an auction and all sorts of other things, and even additional events like the Texas Independence Jam. I’ve been able to mesh my professional life with the folks at Cook Children’s. It’s been great to bring those two things together.”

In addition to his legendary career in radio, two published novels and an impressive list of national awards and nominations, Mark is an avid baseball card collector. He spent his childhood, teens and early adulthood amassing a collection of over 20,000 baseball cards. In 2023, Mark decided to liquidate his collection with the help of Heritage Auctions.

“I knew there were some valuable cards [in the collection], and I knew it was worth something, but I was also thinking about passing it along or doing something with it,” Mark said. “That’s when I had the idea to donate the proceeds to Cook Children’s.”

The online auction went live in January 2024, and sports card collectors from all over the world purchased treasures from Mark’s collection.

“I had a great childhood, and the cards were a big part of that,” Mark said. “It was a wonderful experience to go through the whole collection with Heritage Auctions, and to know that something that brought me joy as a kid will help these kids enjoy their childhood. It felt like this is what it was all for. It was just a great final way to say goodbye to the cards; I don’t even feel like I said goodbye. I feel like a piece of my childhood is at that hospital.”

For more than 20 years, Mark has been a treasured partner in our Promise to improve the well-being of every child in our care and in our communities. From Camp Sanguinity, to Radiothon and the baseball card auction and beyond, he has generously given his time, talents and resources to support our patients.

“I’ve always said the hospital is a jewel in the crown of Fort Worth, and I feel like I’m a part of it,” Mark said. “I hope everyone gets that joy and that feeling when they give or come to an event. It’s the whole community that comes together to give back.”