You Can No Longer Sit On Your Hands

By D’Ann Lawrence White
My four fellow walkers applauded as I crossed the finish line one of them created by rubbing the toe of her athletic shoe across the dirt in the parking lot.
I’d completed my first 18-mile walk.
It was far from doing the 60 miles over three days I was expected to do the next weekend for Project Cure. But it wasn’t too shabby for a 47-year-old woman whose idea of exercise up until recently had been carrying a basket of laundry up the stairs and chasing the cat out the door.
We’d been training all summer, every weekend at 5:30 a.m. on Natures Way where our three-day walk to benefit the Don and Erika Wallace Comprehensive Breast Program for the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute would take place in memory of our friends at St. Stephen Catholic Church and School who lost their lives to breast cancer.
I was determined to walk, not only for my friends Rosana Bryant and Cheryl Nance, who died in their 30s leaving young children behind, but for all my other loved ones and friends who have lost their lives to cancer.
You reach the point where you can no longer sit on your hands, and when I heard a Moffitt researcher speak at the Greater Brandon Community Foundation Pink Tea and learned that the cancer center was conducting breakthrough genome research, I realized we could make a measurable difference by putting funds directly into the hands of the people who are seeking answers.
That was really my only contribution to Project Cure. We teamed up with the Lightning Foundation, which already had the fundraising arm in place and allowed us to sell its signature pink baseball caps with all proceeds going to the Wallace program.
All the real work was accomplished by a group of women whose strength and determination leaves me in awe – Lisa Huetteman, Mary Owens, Ivette Wagner, Amy Meany and Jean Weber, with a whole lot of help from the St. Stephen parish.
Let me amend that. With a whole lot of help from everyone we encountered and shared our story with.
Nearly everyone has been touched by cancer. I was speaking with Capt. John Marsicano of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, asking if he could send a patrol car by occasionally to check on a group of women walking Natures Way in total darkness at 5:30 a.m. carrying nothing more for defense other than mace and Grace (a stone Father Bill Swengros gave me with the word “grace” carved into it for me to rub to use my Parkinson’s tremors). Marsicano lost a son to cancer and was more than happy to do anything to help. The only problem, he joked, after discovering we were doing a 20-minute mile, was finding a cruiser that could pace us that slowly.
Actually, we probably walk a 15-minute mile, but thanks to the graciousness of the Bloomingdale Golfers Club, we take a break at the clubhouse restrooms about every two laps and spend more time than we should taking advantage of the clubhouse’s running water and air conditioning.
Of course, you aren’t required to walk the entire 60 miles. You can walk one mile, five miles or just come out and volunteer. We welcome everyone.
For information, visit, www.projectcure.ststephencatholic.org.