Relay For Life: 25 years of hope!
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| Artist Mary Wojciechowski designs luminaries at the February exhibit. |
The Relay For Life of Greater Attleboro will mark its 25th anniversary
this weekend at Norton High School in Norton, MA. In this column, which was published today
(Thursday, June 8) in The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA, talks about the journey
of the relay and its supporters over the last quarter-century of raising money
for the American Cancer Society.
The relay will take place tomorrow (Friday, June 9, at 5 p.m., through about 10
a.m. Saturday, June 10.)
The link to the column as it appears on the newspaper’s website follows: https://www.thesunchronicle.
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The Relay For Life of Greater Attleboro, a team fundraiser for the American
Cancer Society, will celebrate its 25th anniversary when it returns
to the Norton High School track 5 p.m. Friday, June 9 to 10 a.m. Saturday, June
10, and it’s always had a simple premise: Raise money for the agonizing fight
against cancer while recognizing survivors and remembering those for whom cures
came too late.
The national relay began in 1985 by Dr. Gordon "Gordy" Klatt, who walked
and ran for 24 hours around a track in Tacoma, Wash. He covered 83.6 miles and
raised $27,000. Klatt died Aug. 3, 2014, from heart failure and stomach cancer.
Although some things
have changed since the first Attleboro area relay was held June 11-12, 1999, at
North Attleboro High School, many things have stayed the same:
* Teams and
participants circle the track from the opening ceremony through the wrap-up
Saturday morning. The teams raise money before and during the event. In its
first 24 years, the Relay For Life of Greater Attleboro has raised more than
$4.5 million --- money that pays for, among other things, transportation to and
from appointments, lodging for cancer patients and research into lifesaving
treatments and drugs.
* Candles called luminaries, illuminated with glow sticks, are lit around the
track in memory of cancer victims and in honor of cancer survivors.
* A luminary ceremony is held opening night, and it’s always been one of the relay’s
most moving aspects.
None of this would happen without thousands of volunteers, and often times,
teams and participants double as members of the volunteer committee. For
example, the chair of the last several relays, Barbara Benoit, is also the
captain of Carol and Margie’s Marchers.
For a column marking the 20th anniversary in 2018, she explained why
she got involved.
“In 2000, I saw an article in The Sun Chronicle about the Greater Attleboro
Relay and decided to start a team in memory of my mother, Margaret Gill. Our
team was Margie’s Marchers until 2016, when my mother’s best friend, Carol
Amirault, passed away, and we changed the name.” She’s been relaying ever since
“to try and make a difference so that someday, no one will hear the words ‘you
have cancer.’ ”
That’s always been the ultimate goal of the local relay since it began in 1999,
and that’s never changed. As proof, I’d like to conclude with excerpts from a
column that my friend and retired Sun Chronicle colleague, Gloria LaBounty,
wrote on June 21, 1999. Her words remain extremely relevant today:
Her column began:
“It seemed fitting that the song being played over the loudspeaker during our
first lap was Eric Clapton's ‘Tears In Heaven.’ He wrote the song in memory of
his young son, and my family was in this 24-hour Relay For Life in memory of my
sister, who had also been an aunt, a mother, a daughter.
“After only three months, the pain of loss was still too fresh. We had to do
something, and we couldn't do anything more for her. So, we were walking, to
hopefully do something for someone else.
“All the money being raised was going to the American Cancer Society for
programs and research for every kind of cancer, from the rare to the all too
common. For us, it had been Hodgkin's disease, a form of cancer that doctors
had told us was the kind to get, because it is so curable.
“After 10 years of helping her through countless remissions, repeated
recurrences, difficult treatments and finally, deterioration, we knew that no
kind of cancer is the kind to get.
“So we were at North Attleboro High School, walking in the place where only a
few years ago, she had proudly watched her daughter graduate. We pitched our
tent on the field, set up chairs, rolled out sleeping bags, ate pizza, and
walked.
“Others around us did the same. Families, churches, businesses, neighbors,
friends all were there in memory, in support, in appreciation, or in the case
of one man I heard about, in gratitude that no one in his family had ever had
cancer.
“Families like that are becoming rare. Hardly anyone these days has not been
touched by this disease that takes control of a life, and makes everyone else
feel helpless,” she wrote.
At some point, everyone who’s involved in relay, starts believing in the
miracles that will be needed to cure cancer, and that feeling was eloquently
captured by Gloria:
“When we think of heaven, we automatically look out there, and wonder. Faith
tells us there is a heaven, or some kind of afterlife, and people tell you
after you lose someone, that she is in a better place. You hope and pray that
is true, but you know that you will never know for sure until you are there
yourself.
“Maybe they were there with us, my sister and all the others represented by
luminaries that slowly started going out.
“Walking through the darkness, through sore legs and sleepiness, I began
wondering whether walking in circles over and over again would really make a
difference at all. But I felt driven, as though with every step, I was somehow
helping, and earning the money so many people had pledged.
“When we took our final lap, we were glad we had done it. There was a sense
that maybe we were not so helpless in the face of cancer after all. The
luminaries had been removed from the track by then … but the luminaries that
stayed with me were the ones that had been in the bleachers, spelling out ‘hope.’
Hope, after all, is all there is.”
Larry Kessler, a retired Sun Chronicle local news editor, can
be reached at larrythek65@gmail.com. He blogs at larrytheklineup.blogspot.com
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