Teams gather to Relay for Life

By RICHARD L. BOCCIA

One sign said: ‘There is no finish line until we find a cure.’

AUSTINTOWN — Relay for Life volunteers and organizers declared two enemies to their weekend event: cancer and the rain.

Standing by the track at Austintown Fitch High School’s Falcon Stadium, Maureen Reynolds shushed every mention of precipitation. She was the American Cancer Society coordinator for the event, the high school’s ninth Relay for Life, and her Saturday morning fundraising estimate was $22,000, though she said more than that would come in later in the day.

Twenty-one teams gathered on the grass to the south of the track, where tents sat around the WHOT-FM HOT 101 stage. Disc jockey A.C. McCullough welcomed the participants, which included cancer survivors.

“Every year, their [survivors] numbers grow larger,” McCullough said. “That tells me that we’re making progress.”

Still, there was a long walk ahead for many at the relay, and a sign below the stage read: “There is no finish line until we find a cure.”

Sophie Avery, 56, led the first lap by survivors after greeting them from the stage. Avery survived leukemia after treatment with umbilical stem cells. There were tears as she described owing her life to a mother and baby in Italy that she will never meet, and all the blessings in her own life that she would have missed if not for cancer research.

“When you face death like that, you get an appreciation for every little thing,” Avery said after the lap, referring even to the grass that she stood on outside her church’s tent.

Avery and her husband, Ernie, of Girard, walked for Redeemer Lutheran Church on state Route 46. “This is our way of giving back,” Sophie said. “We can do this. We can raise money.”

Music tied the event together, from the loudspeakers that pumped out Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” during that first lap to a performance from the ROCck Children’s Choir.

The children, ages 4 to 17, have all been affected by cancer, and a few were survivors themselves. “We’re a group of kids older than you think,” they sang knowingly. The crowd clapped along to the music’s message of perseverance: “Thanks to you all, we’re glad to be here. Relay the message. There’s hope in what we do.”

Hope is part of the support network that forms between families affected by cancer, some of whom are brought together by Relay for Life. Recovering from cancer and supporting research has brought the Lewis family closer together, as relatives gathered after several cases of cancer in the family.

This year, the Lewis family’s Relay theme, “Brewing up a cure for cancer,” won top honors with team members dressing in black pointed hats and cloaks. Patsy Lewis, 62, donned a big plastic nose with a red wart and carried a broom, while Lucille Bartelmay, 84, pulled on a long black wig and tall socks to complete her witch costume.

“I’m the head witch,” she laughed, but she also spoke of the serious purpose of an event that finds ways to have fun. “My husband, Norman, died of lung cancer, and we started in his honor,” Bartelmay said.

A 6-year-old cancer survivor named Becca Makar wasn’t afraid of the witches, and couldn’t remember her own fight with a brain tumor at 2. Her parents, Shari and Keith, said their daughter’s cancer had revealed a new world to them.

“You never think it’s going to happen to you, to a family member — or to a child of 2,” said Keith, 50, of Austintown. Shari, 44, described it as devastating, but said she now appreciates every day, and the support network that they discovered in the community of survivors and families touched by cancer. The relay ends today.