Monday marked the 10th anniversary of the death of Deshea Townsend's mother, Lena. "Let's look," he said as he rolled up the left sleeve of his practice undershirt to check the date on his forearm tattoo, a memorial framed in ink by angel wings: RIP, LT, 11-26-39, 9-28-99. "Yep. It was 10 years ago."

Shiny, florescent-pink-trimmed football shoes with silver cleats sit in the next locker for his buddy Hines Ward to wear tonight. Similarly toned shoes, most of them completely pink with white or black trim, also will be worn by Steelers teammates Ben Roethlisberger, Santonio Holmes, Ryan Clark, Lawrence Timmons, Willie Gay and a host of other players around the National Football League. Many Steelers also will wear pink gloves and wristbands for their 8:20 p.m. game against San Diego in Heinz Field. Ribbon pins and white-and-black Steelers ballcaps with pink-lined bills will be donned by coaches along the home sideline.

National Breast Cancer Awareness Month started Thursday across America, and it formally kicks off today for the NFL across its internationally televised stage.

But it stirred deep inside Steelers such as Max Starks, Tony Hills, Dennis Dixon and Mr. Townsend long before.

"Even though I have that with me every time I go on the field, it's just not the pink gloves or pink shoes for me," said Mr. Townsend, a cornerback-safety whose mother hid her diagnosis from her family for too long, making education a deeply personal point of emphasis for him. One of his two sisters, LaMeisha, from the family hometown of Batesville, Miss., later discovered she also had breast cancer, but early detection enabled her to beat it. "It's an everyday thing that I have to deal with."

For Mr. Dixon, the Steelers' third- string quarterback, it's a similar tale. His mother, Jueretta, kept her diagnosis from him and sister Danitra, 19 and 16 at the time. He also has a tattoo to commemorate his mother, a portrait of her on his right, throwing shoulder.

"I got that two or three days after, after that happened. I was scared about tattoos. This is my first and only. I knew it was going to hurt, but I knew it was going to hurt for a good reason, a good cause."

For Mr. Hills, a reserve offensive tackle, a private visit with cancer patients Friday at Magee-Womens Hospital and a monthlong slate of events constitute reminders. Every time he settles into his ritual Saturday morning breakfast, or every time a certain television show comes up, he thinks back to the grandmother, Lillian Lemons, who died of breast cancer when he was 6.

"A big box of Cream of Wheat -- every time I eat it, I think of her," Mr. Hills said, smiling at the memory.

"She used to cook Cream of Wheat all the time in the morning, and we'd watch 'Knight Rider' -- that was her favorite show. So every time I see that show, I kind of laugh."

Mr. Starks, the Steelers' starting left tackle, is one of the fortunate ones. His mother, Elleanor, is a 17-year survivor of the disease.

He can laugh with her, shoot a Campbell's Chunky Soup commercial with her and be a co-host with her at their fifth annual Hot Pink Pittsburgh event Oct. 13 at the Byham Theater to raise funds for breast- and cervical-cancer screening for uninsured women around Western Pennsylvania.

"It means a lot; I can do something with my mom to kind of raise awareness and celebrate what she's done, what she's accomplished, by never giving up and always fighting," Mr. Starks said.

"The most important thing is, you want to get awareness out there. You never want a person to think that they're above having this happen to them or striking their family. The reality is, it will strike one in three families in a number of different ways. We all have either a mother, a sister, a daughter, a niece, somebody that's a woman in your life and they could very easily be affected by it."

Much the same as Major League Baseball's June campaign to raise money for and awareness about prostate cancer, the NFL has aligned its ranks in recent years for, among others, the charity of breast cancer research and awareness. Coaches wore ribbon pins, players used pink towels on the sidelines, parts of fields were painted pink, and that about summarized their game-day display of support previously.

Today, breast cancer's honorary color will be all the rage amid this macho-male domain.

They will start with pink coins for the coin toss and kick off a ball with a large pink-ribbon imprint. Look to the referees' get-ups, the captain's "C's" on the jerseys of Steelers linebacker James Farrior and five colleagues, or the shoes worn by such stars as Arizona receiver Larry Fitzgerald, a product of the University of Pittsburgh, Minnesota quarterback Brett Favre, a few Steelers and more across the league. Then maybe watch a game finish with a kick through a goalpost padded in bright pink.

Pretty in pink, indeed.

The wristbands, gloves, cleats, balls and more will be autographed and auctioned on the NFLAuction.NFL.com Web site later, benefiting the American Cancer Society and team charities. T-shirts and other themed products also are planned for sale through the NFL Web site.

For Willie Parker, the Steelers' starting halfback hobbled by a painful turf toe, his pink shoes created by Nike ­-- the same company that provides shoes to Mr. Roethlisberger and Mr. Ward -- came at a bad time: He won't play tonight.

For tight end Heath Miller, the cleats that arrived Thursday don't fit properly -- he prefers an out-of-production style -- and don't live up to the muted billing by his apparel-line representative.

"The guy from Reebok said, 'I know you don't like flashy things, so we'll just put some subtle stripes on them,' " Mr. Miller said, peering at all-pink shoes, far more vibrant than the pink-toed and pink-soled white ones worn by his Nike-sponsored teammates. "Then I opened the box. ... I have to call him back to have him define 'subtle' for me."

Reebok-issue cleats were placed Friday into the game-day bags of Mr. Holmes, a receiver, Mr. Clark, a safety, and Mr. Gay, a cornerback, while Mr. Timmons, a linebacker, was preparing to wear a pair from adidas.

"Do we like them? Probably not," Mr. Ward said, with a chuckle, after testing his pair in Wednesday's practice. "But I think it's good that the players are teaming up for a great cause. Some of these players on our team are affected."

For years, his locker has been next to Mr. Townsend's -- the other longest-tenured Steelers player still on the roster -- and the subject of Lena Townsend rarely if ever gets mentioned among these close teammates and friends, not even this week.

"This is actually the first year for the pink gloves and the pink shoes -- they don't match the uniform, but they fit the cause," Mr. Townsend said. "I loved to see when the NCAA women [basketball teams] had the pink uniforms on a couple of times last year. I thought that was really special. I think it's going to be great for the NFL to get involved, especially for guys who have had loved ones lost to cancer."

The battle against breast cancer is being won in small increments: The rate of deaths among women has declined 2 percent yearly since 1990, according to an American Cancer Society report.

Some 200,000 U.S. women will be diagnosed with it this year alone.

Nearly one of every five will die.

In a little-known twist, the incidence of breast cancer among men has increased at a rate of almost 1 percent yearly since 1975. The report estimated that some 2,000 U.S. men will be diagnosed with it this year alone. Nearly one of every four will die.

Elleanor Starks' son was in the third grade when she pulled him and his sister into a room to talk.

"We grew up working in the funeral home business," Mr. Starks recalled. "At that point, I understood the broad concept of life and death. Did I understand cancer exactly? No. But I understood what the final result could have been with my mother had the treatments not been successful."

Mr. Dixon didn't know until too late. He was 19, leaving the family's home in the Oakland, Calif., area for college. Just as Mr. Townsend's mother did, Jueretta Dixon tried to keep it from her children.

"They don't know how their kids are going to react at a young age. And seeing that I was going away for the first time, she didn't know how to bring it upon us," he recalled. "But my sister and I found out when the [chemotherapy] symptoms and everything started to come into play. I have to say, she was a strong, strong lady. She didn't really show too much emotion around us, as family."

He came home before his second semester as a freshman started, and "I was really happy that I had the chance to actually say goodbye. It was a week before. Right when I got back" to Oregon on Feb. 3, 2004, "I called to check in, just wanted to hear her voice. My dad was like, 'Oh, guess who's on the phone? Dennis Jr.' As soon as he handed her the phone, that's when it was over. ... "

No such chance arrived for Mr. Townsend. In 1999, starting his second Steelers season, he found out late about his mother's condition. She went into a northwest Mississippi hospital on a Thursday and died the next Tuesday. He left the team, went home for the Saturday funeral and returned to play special teams against Jacksonville the next day.

"She was diagnosed, but she kind of hid it from everyone," recalled Mr. Townsend. "She kind of dealt with it herself instead of taking some of the precautionary measures that might've, could've prolonged her life or maybe even given her a chance of beating breast cancer.

"You know, one thing that comes along with trying to educate people is [there isn't a need for] trying to keep a problem to themselves, not wanting to burden others. The more you can spread that awareness, it lets people know they do have a chance to survive from this cancer."

Doug Oster writes a blog, "Growing With Doug," exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.