Relay For Life kicked off with celebration

by Alice E. Gerard
Grand Island Dispatch, February 9, 2007

At the kickoff for Grand Island’s 2007 Relay For Life, honorary survivor Beth Dommer holds youngest survivor Ian Cameron, also of Grand Island. (photo by Alice E. Gerard)

The 2007 Relay For Life was kicked off with an expression of hope for a cancer-free world.

“The American Cancer Society goal is to eliminate cancer by the year 2015, and that is a beautiful thing,” said Mary Dunbar-Daluisio, who serves as co-chair of the event, along with Grand Island Town Supervisor Peter McMahon.

The kickoff event featured music, a mini-luminary ceremony, and a talk by the 2007 honorary survivor, Beth Dommer, about how she dealt with life after cancer.

The Relay For Life is an overnight event that is scheduled to take place from Friday, June 8, to Saturday, June 9, at the Grand Island High School track.

The mini-luminary ceremony featured Dommer and Alicia Sommer, the 2006 honorary survivor, lighting luminaries and offering a small gift of bubbles to all of the cancer survivors in the auditorium. The smallest survivor in the room, 3-year-old Ian Cameron, clapped and giggled as his mother, Dona Cameron, blew bubbles with him. Dona is the team leader of “Ian’s Choo Choo Express,” a team that participated in last year’s event and that is planning to participate in this year’s event.

Dommer, a bus driver for the Grand Island school system, related the fears that she experienced when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1990.

“My mother died of breast cancer in 1983. Was I going to die, too? Oh, no. Not me. I was going to fight with everything I had. But this doesn’t make me different from anyone else,” Dommer said. She said that she was just 39 years old and that her husband and two sons needed her.

After undergoing surgery, Dommer was relieved to learn that no cancer had been detected in her lymph nodes, sparing her from undergoing any more anti-cancer treatments, including chemotherapy and radiation.

“I went back to work in two and a half weeks after surgery, just to prove that I was OK. That’s when I buried the reality of dealing with my diagnosis, the surgery’s impact on my life, or the recovery process. I had moved on and kept saying, ‘I’m fine.’ I did not share my fears or my apprehensions,” Dommer said.

Dommer said, after cancer, “I now looked at life with a little bit different view. I took up skiing, kayaking, bicycling and we even got our Christmas picture taken at the zoo, in the pen, with the elephants. Let me tell you, that is cool… but you start looking at things and challenging yourself and saying, ‘Hey, why not? I’ve already lived through cancer. I can live through an elephant. They’re really huge.’ ”

It is important for cancer survivors to accept the support of friends and family, Dommer said. She talked about a friend who skied with her and who walked the cancer survivors’ lap with her last year at the relay. “To my disappointment, I lost her after our birthdays just this past October. We shared our lives and her death. This year, I will walk in her honor.”

“Take time each day to say thank you for your life,” Dommer said.

Deb Bogdan of the American Cancer Society said that she is looking forward to the day when cancer claims no more lives. “The American Cancer Society made an announcement recently that we have truly turned the corner on this disease. For the second year in a row, we have seen a decrease in cancer deaths. They see this decrease continuing every single year.”

The theme for this year’s Relay For Life is “Go retro for a cure,” said Dunbar-Daluisio. She added that, “The Island of Hope is what we’ll always be.”

The money that is raised by the event “goes for programs and services,” Dunbar-Daluisio said. She said that she had the experience of sitting at a meeting at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo and having “a researcher from Roswell say how thankful he was for the work that is done in raising money for them to be able to do research. It’s right here in our back yard.”

For more information about the Relay For Life, contact the American Cancer Society at 1-(800) ACS-2345 or check the Web site for the Grand Island event.