Relay for Life - The World is Looking To Us
From my archives:
Why did I get involved with Relay For Life?
I want to see cancer go from deadly to treatable; from treatable to preventable. This is why I have joined the fight.
As we saw 100 years ago, cancer thrives on silence, complacency and business as usual. Change comes when we speak out. When we make noise. Because silence won't finish the fight - action will.
Since the American Cancer Society began it's research program 60 years ago, the ACS has invested approximately $3.6 billion in research, including giving 46 future Nobel Prize winners the recognition and funding they needed to get started.
The world is looking to us.
Today, ACS is a global leader in the fight against cancer with $1 billion in resources annually invested in the fight to save lives by helping people stay well and get well, by finding cures, and by fighting back against the disease. Thanks in part to the Society's work, there are nearly 12 million people alive in the United States alone who have survived cancer (including me!). In fact, more than 400 lives -- 400 LIVES -- are being saved EACH day that would otherwise have been lost to the disease.
This year I will represent Chandler as their Grand Marshall at Relay for Life. Since last year both of my parents have lost their lives to cancer. Three generations will walk the track as we celebrate the American Cancer Society's 101st birthday, not as a pat-on-the-back, but as a clarion call to stay in the fight so that no one - in the U.S. or around the world - will ever lose another birthday to cancer.
It is time to get loud!
"The world is looking to us."
That line has stuck with me from a cancer event I attended last week.
"The world is looking to us."
Us.
Men. Women. Children. Doctors. Nurses. Researchers. Normal people who get up and go to work everyday. Who raise their families. Who have one thing in common.
They are people who believe that a cure for cancer is possible and will do their part to see it happen.
Over 100 years ago, the word "cancer" was rarely spoken and almost all patients died from the disease. Physicians sometimes did not tell their patients they had cancer, and patients often did not tell their friends and families if they had been diagnosed.
A group of 15 physicians and business leaders in New York City knew they had to raise public awareness about cancer. Despite the enormity of their task, they started writing articles for magazines and professional journals and published a monthly bulletin of cancer information and recruited doctors throughout the country to help educate the public.
That was 1913. It was this group of activists that started what became the American Cancer Society.
100 years ago, the fight was begun. Now is the time to finish the fight.
It is time to make this cancer's final century.
This is the reason I have become involved with Relay for Life,
The world is looking to us.