Sideshow was trying to describe what it feels like to walk into a children’s hospital in December with an armful of teddy bears, the thing his friend Mark Shenefield did every single year. He stopped halfway to admit he had chills.
“As soon as I talk about it, I start getting chills because it is such a powerful moment when you hand a child the teddy bear that is battling a disease,” the host said on the 99 Percent Radio Show. “And you see that smile go on their face.”
Mark Shenefield, known to every corner of Cowboys Nation as Tattoo Mark, died unexpectedly on the morning of Tuesday, Oct. 13, according to CBS News Texas. He was the founder of the Tattoo Mark Foundation, a Texas nonprofit that puts new teddy bears into the arms of kids stuck in hospital beds. A cause of death has not been released, and that is where this story leaves it.
The next afternoon, the 99 Percent Radio Show turned its weekly broadcast from Fishbowl Studios in Bedford, Texas, into a tribute. Friends filled the studio couches. Others called in from across Texas and as far away as Colorado. People who knew Mark for decades and people who knew him for a couple of years all said some version of the same thing. I sat with every minute of it. This is what they told me about him.
Who Mark Was
Start with the ink, because everybody did.
Mark wore the Cowboys on his skin. CBS News Texas counted 21 Cowboys-related tattoos and noted that Jerry Jones once called him the walking billboard of the Dallas Cowboys. He got his first Cowboys tattoo in 1985, the station reported years earlier, and never stopped.
His friend Oscar Ramos explained how some of those tattoos came to be.
“He had, like, you know, Michael Irvin, Roger Staubach, Troy, Emmitt, and I can keep going,” Ramos said. “They would sign his actual body, and he told me he put hairspray over it to keep it intact until he went to the tattoo artist.”
Jennifer Reed, a supporter of the foundation and the Celebrity Softball Classic, remembered how the Drew Pearson tattoo started: as a Facebook message while she was working on Drew Pearson’s show. Mark wanted to know if Drew would be cool with Mark putting his face on his body. She told him to go for it. He got the tattoo, then came on the show to show it off.
But the ink was the part you saw from across the parking lot. The part people kept coming back to on the broadcast was what it felt like to stand next to him.
“His energy was electric,” Sideshow said. “I don’t think I’ve met anybody with such a vibe about him that… you could be in the worst mood of the day and be around Mark and his aura would just, boom, just uplift you because he would break you out of that.”
Billie Ball, a Tattoo Mark Foundation board member, put it plainly.
“He had just a personality that was bigger than life,” she said. “Like, even when he was being the Mark that you wanted to throttle, you still always loved him. And he was just true to himself.”
She also remembered a race day with the whole crew, the day “we all discovered that Fireball came in a keg.” Her verdict on how that went: “We finished that keg.”
Reed called him “the light in the room that kept everyone else going,” even on the days he had every reason to be upset or frustrated.
The Tattoo Mark Foundation
Mark formally organized the Tattoo Mark Foundation with close friends and local business partners in 2024, according to the foundation. It is a 501(c)(3) built to raise money for toys, activities, and support for children receiving care in medical or mental health facilities. In practice, it meant teddy bears. Lots of them.
The foundation says its holiday deliveries reach children’s hospitals across Texas, including Children’s Medical Center Dallas, Cook Children’s in Fort Worth, Scottish Rite in Dallas, Texas Children’s in Houston, Driscoll Children’s in Corpus Christi, and El Paso Children’s, plus Ronald McDonald Houses in several cities. Cowboys fan clubs in San Angelo, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Houston, El Paso, and Southern California run their own drives. Come the holidays, Mark had another name. The foundation’s own site still lists him as “Tattoo Mark” and “Santa-Tat.”
He was not doing this from a place of comfort. Mark talked openly about his own health fight, telling CBS News Texas that he teared up handing bears to kids because “I’m fighting a disease and I know they are, too.” Read that interview here.
The people closest to him described what that commitment actually cost.
“You would hear him talk about his love for these kids and collecting of the bears,” Ball said. “And then his refrigerator would be bare because he literally wanted to make sure all this money went to the kids.”
Sideshow went further. “He didn’t have his air conditioner on, his lights on because he couldn’t pay the light bill because he was saving the money to buy bears for the kids,” he said. “He sacrificed so much for those children.”
Jason Hicks of DFW Sports Blitz, who interviewed Mark about his favorite Cowboys memories, said in a video message to the show that the football answers were not what stuck with him.
“He was patient. He was kind to others. He lived life the right way. He was very loving. He was very caring,” Hicks said. He added that if it were not for Mark, there would be no DFW Sports Blitz and no spot for it at the Celebrity Softball Classic.
Mark had a line for it, too. In a 2022 CBS News Texas profile, he said that no matter who wins on Sunday, “the kids always win.”
Memories From Those Who Knew Him
Sam Lopez met Mark more than a decade ago in California and reconnected with him in Texas. “He pretty much got me started with my fan club,” Lopez said. “He was my first guest in San Angelo, and he loved it there, and everybody there loves him.”
Lopez had talked to Mark the Saturday before he died. The two were planning a cruise for Mark’s birthday in December. Mark had asked him for a suit bag. “His first vacation in like 30 years,” Lopez said.
Brian Bishop, part of the Celebrity Softball Classic family, called him “such a giving guy” and “just a humble guy.” He remembered telling Mark he had gone to a game, and Mark’s reaction was pure Mark: you should have told me, I live right across the street, you could have parked at my house.
Lori Montoya of Biker Down, calling in from Colorado, said Mark would message her out of nowhere on hard days, even though they mostly knew each other from sharing Wednesday airtime. His message was simple: “You just keep up the good fight.”
“God’s a very busy man,” Montoya said, “and he used Mark for his mission of giving love to people that needed extraordinary love at that moment.”
Then she asked the question that hung over the rest of the broadcast. “What can we do every day to be a better human being like Tattoo Mark?”
Sideshow shared something more personal. He and Mark talked every morning and had lunch every other Wednesday. His advice to everyone listening was not complicated. If there is something you want to say to someone you love, say it. “Say it,” he repeated.
His Legacy
The foundation does not end with Mark, and the people on that broadcast made sure everyone heard it.
“I know that he’s in a better place and, you know, all we can do is move him forward into… his legacy,” Reed said.
“We’re going to do our best to keep that legacy going,” Sideshow answered. “And we will.”
He made it specific. “We’re going to make sure each and every kid in Texas who is battling a disease in one of these area hospitals gets a bear.”
Mongo, a United States Marine Corps veteran and part of the 99 Percent Radio Network family, turned it into an order. “Go to a store, buy a brand new teddy bear and get those things sent in and let’s help the Tattoo Mark Foundation exceed the expectations of all the years before,” he said.
During the broadcast, Sideshow read a message announcing that a Tattoo Mark Humanitarian Award will be presented to one deserving person at the Celebrity Softball Classic in June 2027.
In a statement shared with CBS News Texas, House of Sterling PR said Mark’s greatest legacy “will undoubtedly be the kindness he extended to others.” John Salerno, quoted in the release announcing Mark’s passing, called him “a true humanitarian through and through,” WFAA reported.
Watch the Tribute
Stucci Media built this tribute entirely from the 99 Percent Radio Show broadcast and real photos of Mark. You will hear Sideshow, Billie Ball, Oscar Ramos, Jennifer Reed, Jason Hicks, Lori Montoya, Mongo, and Mark himself. It runs about four and a half minutes. Keep tissues close.
A Thank You to the 99 Percent Radio Show
Some shows would have read the news release and moved on. The 99 Percent Radio Show cleared its studio, opened its lines, and gave Mark’s people the floor to say what he meant to them. Without that broadcast, most of the memories in this story would have stayed in a group chat.
The show is hosted by Sideshow, a former fire chief and retired NYPD detective who responded with his fire department on 9/11 and started the 99% Radio Network in 2017, and Pitbull, Patricia Mayo, state president of the Battlin Betties of Texas and a member of the Tattoo Mark Foundation herself. Their mission is “Radio with Reason,” giving grassroots nonprofits, veterans, and first responders a platform. Stucci Media covers more of that work in Social Issues and Community Impact.
The 99 Percent Radio Show airs live every Wednesday from 4 to 6 p.m. Central. Follow them here:
- Website: 99percentradionetwork.com
- Facebook: facebook.com/99PercentRadioShow
- YouTube: 99% Radio Network on YouTube
Sideshow, Pitbull, and the whole 99 crew: thank you for keeping him in the room one more time.
How to Honor Mark
If you want to do something, here is what his people asked for.
- Donate to the Tattoo Mark Foundation. Donations are tax deductible and go through the foundation’s secure donation page. Questions can go to Donations@TattooMarkFoundation.com.
- Help bring Mark home. The foundation set up a fundraiser with an $8,000 goal to have Mark buried in California, TXAN 24 reported. You can give to it on Facebook.
- Bring a new teddy bear. Hospitals have rules, so the foundation asked that bears be brand new and go through the foundation rather than straight to a hospital. The next drive is Frank’s Speed Shop’s 6th Annual Halloween Car Show and Teddy Bear Drive on Saturday, Oct. 31, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 716 W. Euless Blvd. in Euless, Texas. It is free to attend, and registering a car costs one teddy bear.
- Follow the foundation on Facebook for memorial arrangements, which the foundation says it will share when they are ready.
Mark said it in his own voice on the 99’s tribute reel, and he wrote it across everything he built. It is still the best summary anyone has.
It’s all about the kids.
Rocci J. Stucci is the founder of Stucci Media. We build legacies, not campaigns.
