Relay grows with university partnership

JENNIFER DITLEVSON HAGLUND/DAILY FORUM
Cancer survivors and their supporters take a victory lap around the Lamkin Activity Center on the Northwest Missouri State University campus Friday night to open the Relay for Life, which is a fundraising event for the American Cancer Society.

Young people walking toward the front of the group carried the banner, and those with canes holding hands with their loved ones hanging in the back completed a circuit around the track. Those who were wearing purple had survived cancer.

At Friday night’s Relay for Life event at Lamkin Activity Center, hundreds of participants could identify ways in which they have been affected by cancer.

Carolyn Coy, who was a team captain and the event coordinator for this year’s Relay for Life of Nodaway County, is a five-year breast cancer survivor. Before she was diagnosed with cancer, she knew about the relay but never felt motivated to join.

This year, however, Coy got more involved than she ever had before. She joined the event planning committee as the chair of social media promotions but gained more planning duties less than two months before Friday.

“I just think it’s a great cause,” Coy said. “It raises awareness and money for something really important.”

Karlee Qualheim of Omaha, Neb., and Jordan Wittrock from Arcadia, Iowa, are seniors at Northwest Missouri State University who have worked with Coy. As student ambassadors, they have recruited organizations on campus to commit to the event.

Wittrock has worked with Relay for Life since middle school because the cause has been personal for her. Her grandmother died of breast cancer and her great-grandma and aunt have survived different cancers.

“I want to come back next year,” Wittrock said. “Or, be involved wherever I end up.”

“I’m the same way,” Qualheim said. “I want to be in a small town to start something that’s never been there.”

Qualheim said 2016 marks her second year of affiliation with Relay for Life. She shared that her mother died of spinal and breast cancer when she was 14 and that her father is in remission from skin cancer.

Qualheim and Wittrock said they felt bad that they often forgot that so many people working for Relay had stories to share, but they think that because it’s so common that it’s easy to overlook.

“It never dawned on me that Carolyn was a survivor,” Qualheim said. “But we’ve connected a lot with her this year.”

Coy said she was happy with the turnout. Lamkin Activity Center was packed. If the event continues to grow, it might return to Bearcat Stadium.

In prior years, the relay took place at the stadium, but dwindling participation didn’t justify reserving the space, according to Coy.

Coy said working with Northwest students has helped to revive interest in the relay. Members of Greek Life, religious, health, and sports groups weren’t the only Northwest organizations active, either. Humans vs. Zombies brought their team to the relay.

The group, which facilitates a campus-wide game of tag based on pitting flesh-eating living dead against healthy humans every semester, had its reasons for joining this year.

Dillon Espey of Parkland Fla., belongs to the group, and he said his grandfather died of lung cancer. Abby Bobbett of Freemont, Neb., ran out of fingers to count all the people she knew who had had cancer and died or survived. Some she knew were currently fighting the disease.

Alpha Sigma Alpha sisters Katie Stevens of Tarkio and Charla Taylor of Springfield joined Relay for Life this year as a part of their sorority’s community service. Both women had close friends or family who had cancer.

“We’ve had a lot of people who felt the impact of cancer,” Stevens said.

Their team leader Austina Falcone of Papillion, Neb., invited both of her parents to the event because her father has cancer, and they joined to support him as a family.

With overall participation on the upswing, Coy would like to see the time span increase again, returning to a 12-hour model. A noon to midnight schedule for the event, she said, could draw the lunch and dinner crowds from the community and increase community involvement.

JENNIFER DITLEVSON HAGLUND/DAILY FORUM
Maryville High School Spectrum show choir performed at the Relay for Life, singing and dancing for those in the stands and on the track.

JENNIFER DITLEVSON HAGLUND/DAILY FORUM
Hundreds of luminarias lined the track during the relay. Each luminaria represented a loved one who had battled cancer, or a person who supported someone who had.