Billiard Legend Jeanette Lee Reveals She Has Terminal Cancer

Legendary billiards player Jeanette Lee revealed in a statement that she has stage-4 ovarian cancer. The 49-year-old United States player, known as "Black Widow" has only a few months to live, as per a GoFundMe page created on her behalf. Lee is a mom to three daughters, aged 16, 11 and 10.

"I intend to bring the same resolve I brought to the billiards table to this fight," Jeanette Lee said in a statement. "Jim Valvano so eloquently told us to ‘Never give up.’ I owe it to my three young daughters to do exactly that," she added citing the former college basketball coach who died of cancer back in 1993.

In her professional career as a billiards player, Lee earned more than 30 national and international titles and achieved No. 1 ranking. Revealing how she got her famous nickname, she recalled in an interview, "It started at this pool room in New York, the Howard Beach Billiard Club. The owner of the room, this guy Gabe, said when I first walked into the room, I was so mysterious and pretty and quiet and nobody knew who I was. Then I just walked up to the table and started whamming balls all over the place."

Lee added that from that point on, the guy went to call her the Black Widow. "It was just our little nickname," she said, adding, "But then it came up once in an interview with the New York Times and, even though it was supposed to be off the record, they wrote about it. And once it was in the media, it took off."

Image Credit: The Today Show