With the national American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life event reaching its silver anniversary, local relays set to begin Friday are looking to make this year’s event bigger and better.
The annual campaign, which started in 1985, is aimed at celebrating life, remembering loved ones and fighting back against the disease, according to Erin Dunagan, with the American Cancer Society. She said this will be the 15th year for the relay in Clark and Floyd counties.
Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services helped to start the relay in Floyd County. Hospital Chaplain Lenne Keithley said the event has grown incrementally since it started.
“The first year, we raised about $5,000. That jumped to $45,000 the following year, and today we raise more than $150,000,” Keithley said.
Floyd County Relay for Life event Chairwoman Allison Smith agrees that much progress has been made since that first year.
“There were just a handful of people walking, and we didn’t really know what we were doing,” she said.
This year, Dunagan said she expects the Floyd County relay to bring in about $165,000. She said the Clark County one will likely bring in more, reaching about $170,000.
Those totals will be thanks to many, including Karen Keeler. Keeler’s brother, Moe Hall, died of cancer 19 years ago.
So, five years ago, the family decided to start participating in the relay to help raise money for the cause. The family set a goal of raising $10,000 a year so that it would reach $50,000 — in the fifth year — which would correspond with what would have been Hall’s 50th birthday.
The family already raised $11,500 this year, exceeding the $50,000 goal.
“I think the relay has brought us closer,” Keeler said. “We do this year-round now. It’s just always with him in mind.”
Keeler said her family stays the night every year at the relay and that it includes lots of fun activities for people of all ages.
Dunagan said Floyd’s relay is the only 18-hour relay in the area. Clark’s is 12 hours. She said the first one, in Tacoma, Wash., lasted 24 hours.
“The reason we go all night is to go through what a cancer patient might experience. It’s hard,” Dunagan said, adding that the dawn of the sun coming up represents getting treatment and seeing the light of getting better.
Dunagan said she encourages anyone to come just to experience it all and that no fees or donations are required.
Dunagan said that though the money raised may not stay local, it helps local people. She said research paid for with money raised before helped create two new drugs to fight breast cancer. She said even though those drugs aren’t made here, but hundreds of people are taking them in this region.
“[Money raised] means that our patients get services. It means research is being funded constantly,” she said. “In the big picture, it means that they are saving lives.”
SO YOU KNOW
• WHAT: Clark County Relay for Life
• WHO: Everyone is invited, even those not on a team
• WHEN: 7 p.m. Friday to 7 a.m. Saturday
• WHERE: Jeffersonville High School
Clark County
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