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CommunityRelay for Life: A fundraiser, a memorial, a celebration
Friday, May 16, 2008
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by DARWIN WEIGEL
Members of Stone Rollers Relay for Life team are relaying in memory of longtime Calvert County resident and teacher Kim Stone.
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The metaphor of darkness relates to a cancer patient’s diagnosis, and the light of a new day, hope and the support that comes from doctors, other survivors, and friends and family, explained St. Mary’s County co-chair of the Relay for Life Sue Lyddon-Hayes. The relay starts at night and runs into the day to underscore that symbolism, she said.
Relay for Life is one of the American Cancer Society’s premier fundraising events with relays held all around the nation that acknowledge the survivors and honor those who have lost their battle with cancer.
Lyddon-Hayes has co-chaired the event in St. Mary’s for five years after being on the entertainment committee for several years, and this year Abigail Seamens is her co-chair.
Each team has a cause, a story, a reason beyond themselves as to why they participate. The Hope Runners came about from a cancer support group at St. Mary’s Hospital, she said. School teams and teams associated with Patuxent River Naval Air Station make up the biggest portion of St. Mary’s teams.
Lyddon-Hayes is on a team, The Lyon’s Roar, dedicated to her aunt who died following a late-stage diagnosis of lung cancer. The team is also relaying for people who don’t have insurance, which makes treatment difficult, she said.
Lyddon-Hayes said she originally got involved ‘‘because cancer is all over my husband’s family.” She began the relay on her employer’s team, BAE Systems.
This is the seventh year Jean Gelatka of Calvert County has participated in the relay, and the fourth year she will walk as captain of Jessie’s Team, named after her daughter Jessica who ‘‘was a steadfast walker for the event” and died in a car accident in 2004, Gelatka said. ‘‘Our family wanted to do something each year to celebrate the person she was and know that she will be smiling on all of us as we do good for others in our community.”
Gelatka lost her father, Joseph, to lung cancer this past year and breast cancer took her mother, Audrey Laure, more than 10 years ago. Both of Gelatka’s sisters have been diagnosed with breast cancer, and have gone through treatment and are now cancer-free, she said.
‘‘Honoring their courageous battles is partly why I am committed” to Relay for Life, she said. But the more personal, heartfelt reason her team gathers each year is in her daughter’s memory.
Another Calvert County team, the Stone Rollers, is walking in memory of Kim Stone who died of cancer last December, said captain Jackie Vaughn, who had been a friend of Stone’s for years. ‘‘My daughter had her as a third-grade teacher last year, and I was her teacher’s aide,” she said.
Stone taught at Huntingtown Elementary School since 1999 and was teaching last year while ‘‘taking treatments during her lunch breaks,” Vaughn said.
‘‘She loved being a teacher and was loved by her students at Huntingtown,” Vaughn said. She was employed by Calvert County public schools from 1980 through 2007, with a brief interruption when her children were young, Vaughn said.
This is Vaughn’s first time on a team and she has never been to a relay event, but she said she and her friends and talked about starting a team in memory of Stone, so she spearheaded the team’s creation.
‘‘I have heard a lot about it, and I understand it’s pretty awesome,” she said of Relay for Life. ‘‘I think it’s going to be touching and very emotional,” Vaughn said about viewing the luminaries that are placed around the track in memory of loved ones who died from cancer.
Terri Verbic-Boggs, owner of Ladies Workout Express in Hollywood, started her team four years ago. She said she started the team knowing that so many people’s lives have been touched by cancer.
Four members of the fitness center started treatment for cancer this past year. ‘‘We have at least 75 cancer survivors out of 400 [fitness center] members,” she said. One team member, Elaine Dodson, lost her battle with colon cancer and they are honoring her memory as well as acknowledging survivors.
Team member Ernestine Pence, who is a 16-year breast cancer survivor, said, ‘‘anytime you say cancer, I’m there” to support the event. ‘‘I feel I’ve been given a second chance of living and I feel blessed.”
Pence said she kept a positive attitude throughout her treatment after her Valentine’s Day diagnosis 16 years ago. ‘‘I’ve been fine ever since,” she said.
Cancer survivor Pam Starkey of Charles County was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at age 39 and went through six rounds of chemotherapy. She had a low-grade reoccurrence in 2000, but remains cancer-free today. Starkey’s mother had also been diagnosed at 39 and died five months later, leaving five children from a year old to 13 for her husband to raise alone.
Starkey, who works at the College of Southern Maryland, said several other employees at the college were diagnosed with cancer at the same time as her initial diagnosis. A fellow survivor and Starkey started a cancer support group and it lead to forming the Relay for Life team, CSM Hawks, in 1999.
‘‘With the support and generosity of the college community, we have raised more than $62,000 over those 10 years,” she said. ‘‘Our goal is to raise more than the previous year, but we’re finding it more challenging this year due to the higher prices and the economy.”
Most team members are not cancer survivors, but have friends and family who have experienced cancer and are dedicated to the cause, Starkey said. The team lost one of its longtime team members to esophageal cancer two years ago, after she had been a 20-year breast cancer survivor, she said.
And one of the team’s newer members lost her daughter to cancer two years ago, leaving behind her husband and three young children, Starkey said.
It’s important to raise as much money as possible to help fund the fight against cancer so someday there will be a cure, she said. ‘‘My mother is my inspiration because she died way too young,” Starkey said.
CSM Hawks sell cancer bracelets, hold an online auction and raffles and organize two ‘‘Souper Tuesdays” where team members donate crock pots of homemade soups that are sold by the bowl or ‘‘soup shooter,” she said.
Grace Lutheran School of Charles County has had a team for six years and it’s the second year for its junior team that was formed by GLS’ captain Lorraine Back’s twin 13-year-old daughters, Kristan and Eleni. The junior team has sold cookies, lemonade, brownies and old toys to raise money for the relay, Back said.
Team GLS also stands for Gladly Losing Sleep. Back said ‘‘our little school of 250 students” has been in the top seven or eight in fundraising for Charles County in the past two years.
The school has sold ice cream and Easter eggs and has ‘‘coins for the cure” jars in classrooms, she said. The school chapel also donates the offering for a week each month, she said.
Back said she had never heard of Relay for Life before she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2001, went through treatment and went back to the school in March 2002.
Back took the survivors’ walk that year, and her girls walked in the relay as well.
‘‘It was just the most ... I don’t even know how to describe it. My life changed,” she said. ‘‘My husband told me, ‘your school is going to have a team and I’m going to captain it.’” Back said her husband, Keith, captained the team for the first three years, and then she took over.
‘‘We will relay until we can’t relay anymore,” Back said. ‘‘We’d like to make sure that nobody else has to go through this, and we’re going to try our darnedest.”
Judi Coyle, co-chair of Calvert County’s Relay for Life, said the three Southern Maryland counties have one relay each unlike other counties that have several relay events. Having only one relay in each county brings people together each year like a reunion, she said.
‘‘It’s everyone coming together as one — it really does make it. Relay is like a huge cocktail party without the cocktails,” Coyle said.
‘‘Every time someone new comes, they are just energized,” she said. Working out the logistics of the relay is a huge undertaking, she said, but communication is the key to an event this large.
Coyle estimated that more than 3,000 people will attend the event that is to be held at Calvert High School. Calvert has more than 100 teams with about 1,650 members on the teams this year, she said.
Last year Calvert County teams netted $432,993 for the American Cancer Society and won multiple regional awards and a national award.
Many teams have fundraisers during the relay selling food and items they make, and fundraising items suggested by the American Cancer Society, so the tally will continue to increase with all the team efforts, she said.
