The Dexter Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Dark of night doesn't dim spirits of Relay participants
By Edward Freundl, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: May 22, 2008
It's 10 p.m. Saturday, and it's the halfway point of the 2008 edition of the 24-hour American Cancer Society Relay for Life.
Advertisement
The crowd is absorbed in a quiet, respectful reverence while the names of some 800 victims and survivors are read over the loudspeakers.
The stadium lights are off and Jerry Niehaus Field is dark, except for the eerie glow of the lighted luminaria lining the track, punctuated by the silhouettes of the walkers.
People are bundled up against the 47-degree night air, but at least the fierce wind that threatened them a few hours earlier has calmed to a gentle breeze.
With the darkness the activities have slowed, but the enthusiasm hasn't. This is the point where dedication to the Relay really starts to sink in for participants.
It's been 12 hours and they've made it this far; if they just concentrate on this lap, then the next one, then the next, it'll be sunrise before they know it.
Although few Relay team members sign up for an all-nighter, many stay for a while during the day, go home, then return.
"We started this morning; we've been back and forth a few times and came back for the luminaria ceremony," said Lima Township resident Gary Adams.
He said he and his wife Janet have been participating in the event for "four or five years" as members of Chelsea Free Methodist Church's "Body, Soul and Spirit" team.
Adams is a survivor, and his story reaches back to the early days of modern cancer treatment.
"I had cancer 41 years ago," he said. "If you think about it, it was a lucky time to get it.
"My doctor came to me and said, 'We have this new treatment we want to try; it involves high-energy radiation.'
"People seemed to be living longer with it, but they weren't sure why," he added.
"I looked in the encyclopedia and the maximum life expectancy for someone with cancer in 1967 was five years."
Like most people involved with the Relay, Janet Adams has had more than one uncomfortably personal association with the disease.
"My sister died of ovarian cancer about 20 years ago," she said.
"Cancer affects everyone you know, somewhere along the line."
Fred Wild of Chelsea was another one who had come to the Relay earlier and returned for the luminaria ceremony.
He and his wife are with the Chelsea Community Hospital team.
"My wife Betty has been a survivor for about 10 years," Wild said. "We got involved with it about six or seven years ago, and we decided to stay with it.
"We both volunteer at the hospital; they got us started and we felt compelled to come back and walk," he said.
"We were here for the Survivor's Lap this morning and came back for the luminaries tonight."
Hundreds of luminary bags lined the edge of the track, with a votive candle inside and memorializing a cancer victim or honoring a survivor.
One person put her name on 11 luminaria, in honor of or in memory of several people as an aunt or sister or daughter.
Many of the bags were quite elaborately decorated, while others were quite simple, with just a name such as "Don B." or "Pete."
Occasionally you could see someone sitting on the track in front of a luminary bag, deep in thought or prayer or meditation.
The Relay attracts more than cancer survivors and their friends and family.
Several groups consisted of young people, for whom the thought of illness and death is usually an unknown concept.
Members of the Chelsea High School Robotics Team were there for a third year to support the American Cancer Society.
They built a small robot, about the size of an oversized footstool, to show off their talents and to pay tribute to a neighbor of a former team member.
Team adviser Mike Kizer 734-417-7428
We do this in honor of Andrew Knox, who passed away at 9 years old," said team adviser Mike Kizer. "We started this three years ago, at the time of his treatment, and he died a little over a year ago."
The students also showed their ingenuity by using the robot to raise money.
"We put a cooler on it and drove it around the track selling bottled water as a fund-raiser," Kizer said, noting that their goal was $1,000 and they actually collected $1,400.
"We call the robot 'Frankenstein' because it was built with little odds and ends, and we plan to expand it every year so it can have more functions," Kizer added.
Other high school groups involved in the Relay are the CHS chapter of Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD), the Community High School of Ann Arbor, and Manchester High School.
At about 11 p.m. event chair Janice Kett-Blinn said despite the scare with the weather, the Relay had been "an incredible event" so far.
"We just completed the luminaria ceremony, which took about one and a half hours," Kett-Blinn said.
"We'll have games and activities tonight: Football Frenzy at 1 a.m., a live band at 3 a.m., special laps - and Thompson's Pizzeria is serving pizzas at midnight."
Cancer has been a dark presence in Kett-Blinn's family for many years, which motivated her to get involved.
"It's quite an emotional thing for me," she said. "I'm a survivor for 11 years, and I got involved about eight years ago.
"My sister died six weeks ago, she had a brain tumor diagnosed three months before that; and my mom died five years ago, just three and a half weeks after her diagnosis," she added.
"We will fight this any way we can."
Kett-Blinn said as many as 60 people in the Chelsea and Manchester areas will be touched by cancer this year.
The Relay committee had accomplished its goal this year of attracting 25 teams, but fund-raising efforts were falling short of the goal of $100,000.
"As of Wednesday (May 14) we were about halfway there," she said.
Kett-Blinn described the Relay For Life as mirroring the challenges a cancer victim faces on any given day.
"The 24-hour Relay tries to symbolize a day in the life of a cancer victim," she said.
"The wind storm we had was a perfect metaphor of dealing with the trials and tribulations that people with cancer deal with.
"Cancer never sleeps, and we're here to fight back."
Laura Seyfried with the American Cancer Society said she was pleased that the Relay was able to return to its former home at the football stadium.
"It's been going well - it's been a lot of fun being back at school with the track," Seyfried said.
The event had to be moved to the Chelsea Community Fairgrounds for the two previous years while the football field was being rebuilt.
"This is the first big community event they've allowed in here since it was reopened," she added.
"There is a lot more room for a lot more teams. There are a lot of family teams, and that's always fun."
Not all stories are guaranteed to appear
online. The Web edition contains a reasonable
sampling of the print edition stories.
For the most complete news coverage, we invite you to
subscribe
to the print edition of the paper.
Expanded
Web
Coverage
TOP JOBS
