Fulton County Relay For Life to be held June 9

WAUSEON — Organizers of the Fulton County American Cancer Society Relay For Life urge the public to come out and help them raise funds that will pay for research in fighting cancer as well as help those cancer victims and their families as they struggle with cancer treatments.

The event is Friday, June 9 from 4:30 p.m. to midnight at Saint Caspar Catholic Church in Wauseon.

According to Risa Trumbull, one of the Fulton County Relay For Life event leaders, their 2023 theme "One Hope. Finding A Cure. Fighting For All Cancers," shows "This event is for every cancer. Not one certain cancer. We fight all cancers!"

For those who have not attended a Relay For Life event before, the main activity has teams taking turns walking or running around a track set up at the south parking lot of St. Caspar. Music, games, food, fun and fundraising will also be going on.

She emphasized the Relay For Life is a community event.

"You do not have to be registered to join in the fight/fun at the event. It is open to the public and we really want the public to come," she said.

Honorary chair for 2023 Denise Beale, who underwent a double mastectomy in May 2022, said the news of the need for the surgery came shockingly fast.

"I had a clear mammogram in December of 2021," she said. "But one day my little granddaughter was lying in my lap with her head against my chest, and when she got up, I noticed a pain in my right breast."

The pain was persistent enough that Beale had a biopsy, then surgery and found out she had a highly aggressive cancer called Stage 2 Ductal Carcinoma in situ.

"I wasn't due for my next mammogram until next September," she said. "I thank God for my sweet little granddaughter."

Beale at first was told she would need no chemotherapy treatments, but a study of the tumor showed the cancer cells may have spread throughout her body and chemotherapy treatment was the only way to ensure the cancer did not spread.

She said her heart goes out to the caregivers, like her husband, who had to pick up the slack while she recovered.

She recommended that victims not keep silent about their cancer treatment.

"I wondered what I had done wrong in coming down with cancer. I found reaching out to other people helped me avoid feeling all alone," she said. "I went on Facebook and found out eight of my high school friends also had breast cancer."

Other leadership team members include Becky Dickson, who is team captain of Trinity Lutheran Church, Christy Williams, team captain of the Barrel of Monkeys, and Jen Montoya, who is team captain of Family for a Cure.

Williams said she had worked for the Relay For Life cause for 22 years and was initially invited to join a team at her workplace.

"I didn't know much about it at the time, so I joined the team to learn more’" she explained.

It became much more meaningful when toddler Mattie Powell, daughter of one of her team members, came down with a cancer called ameloblastoma 15 years ago, eventually passing away.

"It was heart-breaking," she said. She says she has kept with the Relay program because she has had other family and friends contract cancer and she wants to help raise funds to find a cure. "I just don't want to see others suffer like that."

Trumbull herself is a cancer survivor. She said she started volunteering at her first Relay For Life in June 2006.

"I was captain for my company team," she said, but cancer appeared in July 2006. "Seventeen years ago, the results of a PAP smear showed I had cervical cancer while being pregnant with my first child," she said. "But surgeons were able to cut out the part of the cervix with cancerous tissue."

She was able to successfully deliver that child, and subsequently had a second child three years later.

Trumbull explained that from her own experience, she knows that having cancer is no longer a death sentence. Besides the walk, celebrating that fact on June 9 will be the survivor dinner at 4:30 p.m. and survivor ceremony at 6 p.m., which allows participants and their friends and families to celebrate surviving cancer.

"Reservations are filled for the dinner, but we have at least 100 survivors coming for the ceremony," she said.

At 10 p.m., the luminaria trail portion of the program starts when the sun goes down. The glowing luminary bags light the walking track in remembrance of those lost to cancer and in honor of those still fighting or those who have fought cancer and won. For many, the luminaria ceremony symbolizes hope and perseverance, and for others, a time to heal.

Trumbull said the donations are helping.

"For example, it was funding from the American Cancer Society that resulted in development of Tamoxifen, a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM) medication used to treat breast cancer in men and women and as a prophylactic agent against breast cancer in women," she said.

Money raised also is used to help cancer victims with things such as rides to treatment centers. They also support places such as Hope Lodge in Cleveland where cancer patients and their families can stay while the patient receives treatment.

Participants will have been involved in fundraising, possibly for the months, leading up to the event. They won't stop until Aug. 31, according to Trumbull.

Since 1985, Fulton County's Relay For Life group has been organizing fund-raising teams for this event that celebrates those who survive cancer as well as those who have lost the fight.

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