"If I get a thousand likes and a thousand comments, I'll put peanut butter on my head," Cody Wilburn said.
Wilburn says it start out as a joke, but his Peanut Butter Challenge had purpose and meaning.
"I lost my father in 2017 to Glioblastoma brain cancer," he said.
It was Wilburn's way of honoring his father Coy, a peanut farmer in Western Oklahoma. They were exceptionally close — only 16 years apart.
Wilburn says he'll always remember what his father taught him.
"Hard work, perseverance. [It] doesn't matter if it's cold outside or if it's hot outside. There's still work to be done," he said.
So, he did just that, working to tell the world about the cancer that took his father. Bringing awareness by doing strange feats of strength like lunging to the top of Oklahoma's Mount Scott live on Facebook as 70,000 people, including his father, watched.
But it's his Peanut Butter Challenge that he's most proud of. Wilburn asked friends and family to donate the price of one jar of peanut better. All the money went to the National Brain Tumor Society.
"And if everyone donated $5.44, then we could make a difference in 2020," he said.
Donate they did! The challenge was on with Wilburn's wife and four-year-old daughter heaping on four pounds of the creamy concoction.
"It felt really like something that shouldn't be there," Wilburn said. "It was really thick and really heavy. It was humid that day. So, the peanut butter was essentially melting off my head."
In true Wilburn fashion, they styled a little humor into the video.
"We were hoping to do a few hairstyles, but it was melting at a fast rate. So, we actually only got one, but it turned out," he said.
Wilburn says not even a power washer could remove this tribute to his father and his peanut farmer roots.
"My hair was still oily for a couple of days," he said.
Now that Coy is gone, Wilburn is dedicating his life to helping find a cure. And by altering the old Oklahoma saying "Cowboy Up" into "Coy Up" in honor of his father. He's hoping to help find a cure for Glioblastoma.
"It's got less than a 3% survival rate, there's no cure for it, and in the medical community it's known as the medical terminator," Wilburn said.
Wilburn also lunged the Golden Gate Bridge to bring even more awareness. It too him five hours and one minute to go across and back. But this time, his father was watching from above.
If you know someone making a difference in the community, then send an email to mike.brooks@kjrh.com.
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