And if you see me, smile and maybe give me a hug. That’s important to me too.

This line is associated with Jim Valvano’s final public remarks during the 1993 ESPY Awards, delivered while he was seriously ill with cancer. In that speech, Valvano urged people to live fully—laughing, thinking, and being moved to tears each day—and he emphasized the sustaining power of human connection. The quoted sentence fits the speech’s intimate, personal tone: he asks the audience not only to remember him or applaud him, but to offer simple, embodied kindness (a smile, a hug) as something that still matters to him in the present, despite his illness and public stature.

Valvano collapses the distance between celebrity and ordinary life, insisting that what he needs is not admiration but warmth. The request for a smile and a hug underscores his broader message that meaning is found in everyday acts of care, not in trophies or grand gestures. Coming from someone facing mortality, the line also reframes “importance”: emotional presence and touch become urgent, dignifying needs rather than sentimental extras. It invites listeners to practice compassion immediately and concretely—treating people as human beings in front of us, not as stories we tell about them later.