Hope in the darkness

Under the glow of the Plains High School field lights, a crowd of 250 people sat looking upward late last Saturday night. Unlike most large gatherings, this was a scene without chatter and without fidgeting. Everyone was listening.

“Cancer shows no preference,” Dave Oliver said into the microphone at the Sanders County Relay for Life Luminary Ceremony. “It strikes young and old, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wivesŠfriends and neighbors,” Oliver said and summarized this year’s Relay for Life cancer fundraiser as a way for the community to turn sorrow into celebration and loss into action.

The relay started at 7 p.m. after the reading of the relay pledge by Andrea Mitchell, the event’s entertainment chair and the singing of the national anthem. This was followed by the traditional first lap, cancer survivors walking half of it alone and the last half with their friends and family.

The parade of teams came at the second lap. The 20 teams, some dressed in different costumes, carried team banners as they also walked alongside the cancer survivors. Laps continued throughout the night and into the late hours of the morning, finishing at 9:45 a.m. with an awards ceremony breakfast and closing remarks at 10 a.m.

During the night teams had continuous walkers doing laps around the Plains High School track completing a combined total of 1,850 recorded miles. So far, the event has raised more than $23,000 for cancer research with donations still coming in. The top money raising team of the event was the Hot Springs Hotties who raised $3,388.60 followed by the First Security Bank who raised $2,341.75 and Perky Pals at $1,374.84.

“I guess each year, when you walk the survivor lap it’s a reaffirmation of life, it’s one more year you’ve survived,” Coleen Magera, the event’s survivor chair, said. She explained that as she sees the number cancer survivors grow each year, it’s a testament to her that cancer is being beaten. She displays this fact visually, by having all new survivors make painted hand prints that are hung on the survivors tent at the relay.

Magera also pointed out that the event carries a message of service and community.

“I think everyone who goes through the treatment of cancer wants to give something back because they survived it,” Magera said.

Cancer survivor Dawn Erving knows this feeling personally.

“To hear the words ‘you have cancer’ is so scary, especially being young and when you think that’s going to be the end of your life,” Erving said. Though she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and cervical cancer in the 80s, with the help of good doctors, she overcame both cancers through surgery.

Though many years have passed since she was diagnosed, Erving says that she never really feels completely free of the disease.

“You can’t say you don’t have cancer, there’s always some cancer in your body, but surviving is being able to say that this year I’m beating cancer,” she said.

One aspect that helped her was support of others. Erving said that without that, and events such as the Relay for Life, fighting cancer would be that much harder.

“I have actually seen death in a sense,” she explained. “I’ve been through the tunnel and I made it back, and I know a lot of other cancer survivors have been that far too and they’re still here.”

On the lighter side of things, the cancer fundraiser had their annual Mr. Relay contest, where seven contestants dressed in drag to raise money. First place winner Randy Mac took home two Seattle Seahawks tickets along with the title, who went under the moniker of “Bucky Babe.” Jacob Dean, “Candy,” took second place and a prize of two tickets to a Griz basketball game, while third place winner J.J. Blood came dressed up as Hilary Clinton and won two tickets to a Lady Griz basketball game.

Kathy Miller, the Relay for Life chairperson, said that though the event didn’t have as many participants as last year, it was a great success. “For people that were here we did one heck of a job,” Miller said. “It says that people really do care for people,” Miller said.

She said she hopeful that the money raised from the event will help find a cure in the future. “At some point somebody’s got to find a cure and that’s the biggest hope people have, not to be able to here the words you have cancer,” Miller said.

During the course of the night, 711 luminaries encompassed the track. The luminaries consisted of paper bags that were covered with messages and pictures of cancer victims and survivors on them. Each luminary represented a donation to cancer research and inside each one a candle was lit.

Lying on the hard dirt of the high school track Tristan James, age 7, stared at the luminary he had made for his cousin David Camp, who passed away at age 10 from leukemia. On Camp’s luminary, James wrote the words “Come home soon” in crayon near a picture of a super hero.

LaRita Stapleton, Camp and James’ grandmother, said that it’s been particularly hard for James to adjust to the loss of his cousin. Yet, she said that the event was able to show her grandson James that there is hope.

“When we first got here, Tristan saw all bags and I said to him ‘See it’s not just David that had Cancer there’s a lot of people who have had cancer,” she said.

Stapleton pointed to all the many cancer survivors who had purple shirts and explained to her grandson that they were people who were fighting and overcoming the disease.

“On the sack it reads ‘come home soon, and I told him that though his cousin is not coming home, we’ll be coming home to him someday,” Stapleton said. “I think it makes him feel better because he knows it’s not just David that was lost.”