Wilmington’s annual Relay For Life event soon - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 By Katie Sindler Advertising The 2010 Relay For Life event kicks off Friday, June 19 at JW Denver Williams Memorial Park. WHS Relay For Life team adviser, Linda Stanforth, encourages students to get involved. “I think there are lots of reasons people would want to be involved. You can work to raise money for a very, very good cause,” Stanforth said. “It may be personal or you may just be doing it for your community,” Stanforth became involved with Relay For Life many years ago. “The first one I was ever involved in was a long time ago, a couple years after I was diagnosed with cancer. And it had personal meaning to me,” Stanforth said. “I was diagnosed with breast cancer in ’99 and I just finished the medication part, so I’m a ten year survivor now.” If students wish to participate in this year’s Relay For Life event, they can easily join the high school team.  “All they have to do is come to our meetings. We have them every Thursday, fourth intervention back here in the back art room,” Stanforth said. “We don’t have a time frame for joining. Our team right now is probably 12 to 15 people. We’d like to have more.” Many students are participating in the Relay For Life fund raising. “We’re selling the candy bars that are made for Relay For Life sales by Anthony Thomas,” Stanforth said. “Also, the high school is doing a variety show to raise money for Relay.” Though there are numerous fund raising events, the actual event is just what the name entails, a relay. “The idea is to try to keep a team member, at least one, on the track at all times. There’s a baton, kind of like a spirit stick, the person [on the track] carries,” Stanforth said. “You do as many laps as you want then someone else takes over.” The event includes much more than just the walking portion of the night. “Each team has a booth and the idea, during the night, is to sell food…there’s fun, there’s games,” Stanforth said. “They have an event every hour, sometimes it has to do with dress up, sometimes to has to do with spirit. So they have ways of entertaining people that are there.” There are many other teams that will be at the event, some businesses and some families. “There’s a couple of teams that are just based on family members, and they’ve been there as long as I can remember. The Hampton family has been there forever,” Stanforth said. “But there’s other teams, from the hospital, Liberty Savings has always had a huge team, Kratzer’s Pharmacy has a team for the first time this year.” According to Stanforth, it’s a really positive event and she tries to help out as much as possible. “I try to help the kids at the high school. Because I realize that cancer affects almost every family or somebody in that family,” Stanforth said.  ‘The other thing that’s really positive about the Relay For Life being a fundraiser is it has money that has been collected by people all over the world which has made a dent in finding ways to cure or make life better for a lot of people.”

Back to the articles list