Friday, April 26, 2013

Relay For Life of Howard/Glasscock Counties

Ready to walk the Survivor's Lap
In Howard County we have an event that has been going on for 19 years, at the writing of this article, called the 'Relay For Life of Howard/Glasscock Counties.'

Nationally, the Relay For Life has it's roots in 1985, when a Tacoma Washington colorectal surgeon named Gordy Klatt held his own event, walking over 83 miles in 24 hours while friends paid $25 to run or walk 30 minutes with him. That year Dr. Klatt raised $27,000. As he walked the track, he came up with the idea of a 24 hour team relay event. Within months he assembled a committee to help plan the event, known then as the City of Destiny Classic 24-Hour Run Against Cancer. That event raised $33,000.

Beginning the Survivor's Lap
In 1994 Lisa Brooks, who was president of the local American Cancer Society chapter, went to Tacoma to attend a Relay For Life event, to see about starting it up here.

Our first Relay For Life event was held in 1995 with 30 survivors, raised $17,000,  had one underwriter and 11 teams. In the second year $20,000 was raised with the total going up yearly until a few years ago when Relay raised a total of $200,000.

Food, food and more food!
For many years the local Relay event has been among the top, per capita, fundraisers in Texas and the top 10, per capita, in the nation.

In 2013 some of the events that happened at the Howard/Glasscock Relay were: silent auction, survivor's meal, opening ceremony, survivor's lap, various entertainers, hope ceremony, auctions, luminaria, bingo, face painting, digging for lifesavers, a limbo lap, dominoes, bunny hop lap, water balloon shot put, chicken dance lap, yahtzee, grow a beard contest, wake up lap, whale of a lap, closing ceremony and victory lap.
Luminarias lit for the
Luminaria Ceremony


This year, 2013, had 21 teams.

If you would like more information about Relay For Life, both locally and nationally, here are some links I found while searching online for information:

I took many more pictures than what are shown above. If you are interested in seeing more of them you can visit this link.

If you would like to share any of your memories of past Relays or mention any special people who have survived or were lost to cancer please feel free to share that in the comments below.

4 comments: