There didn’t seem to be anything that would keep John Sullivan, father of second grader Olivia Sullivan at Fleetwood Elementary School, from volunteering at the school’s Charity Run for Cancer last week.
Olivia was a month old when she was diagnosed with neuroblastoma. Thanks to chemotherapy and treatments, she overcame the disease and was able to run alongside her dad during the event.
“I try to get involved with everything that has to do with cancer,” Sullivan said.
Olivia and all students at Fleetwood Elementary School raised money and awareness during the charity run last week. With the help of fundraising from students and teachers, as well as the time put in by parent volunteers, the event was a success.
Carol Lynch, a physical education teacher at Fleetwood, started the event in 2012 after realizing that many students in the school were impacted by cancer through their families and other people they knew.
After telling the students and sending home information, the event really took off.
“It was an overwhelming response,” Lynch said. “Unfortunately, cancer impacts so many families. We knew that we’d want to repeat it and bring it back out again.”
The run is done through the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. Unlike a full relay, where participants walk all through the night from sunset to sunrise, the students at Fleetwood took 15 to 20 minutes at a time to run around the gym. Each grade level took its turn to participate and made sure to walk, run and dance to the music being played in the background.
Leading up to the event, kids decorated luminary bags. They featured the name and the picture of someone in the children’s lives that either has or had cancer at some point. With many luminaries lining the gym, it was apparent that many kids, as young as they are, have been touched by cancer.
Kristina Patella, a mother of three, currently has stage four colon cancer. Despite the difficulties she’s been through, she’s volunteered to work on the Charity Run in both years of existence.
“I think it’s important, especially for my kids to support others that are going through this,” she said.
Fleetwood’s Charity Run is not a huge event. The children don’t go out into their community to gather donations as participants in the Relay for Life might do.
However, Lynch said the monetary donations have still been overwhelming. Last year, the school raised $912. Lynch said that was a remarkable amount, especially with the event happening just a few weeks after Hurricane Sandy.
She hoped to top the $1,000 mark with the 2013 event.
“It’s a wonderful event that we have here that we care about our community,” Lynch said. “It’s a very giving community.”
Patella believes that every event and every dollar raised help toward finding a cure. Even with stage four cancer, she’s holding out hope.
“There’s always hope that with all this research that this can become a chronic disease and not a terminal one,” she said.
