By Mark Wineka
mwineka@salisburypost.com
On Friday, breast cancer survivor Judy Shoaf went in for a diagnostic mammogram.
Vicki Rhyne accompanied her, and Rhyne will be with Shoaf again Monday when she hears the doctor’s update.
That’s what being part of a support group such as Living in Pink can mean to a person fighting cancer.
A friend seemingly is always there for you.
“We’re a sisterhood,” Rhyne said Friday night at the 15th annual Rowan County Relay for Life.
Shoaf was only a few steps away, joining her other Living in Pink comrades in selling attractive $15 to $17 shirts to support the all-night event.
“Rowan County really knows how to Relay,” said Brooke Moose, senior community manager for the American Cancer Society’s South Atlantic Division.
She wasn’t kidding.
Rowan ranks 21st in the nation and third in the state for the amount of money it raises per capita in the Relay for Life, which supports the American Cancer Society.
The county also ranks first in the South Atlantic Division for the “Pack the Track Award.”
“That’s a big deal,” said Tisha Goodwin, chairwoman of the Rowan Relay for Life Committee.
As the 2009 Relay T-shirts said this year, Rowan is “a community that has taken up the fight.”
In the Rowan County first Relay in 1995, it raised $3,800.
This year, the committee’s goal is to raise $405,000, just a few thousand more than 2008. For many churches, clubs, civic organizations, schools, businesses and government agencies, Relay for Life has become a yearlong effort to help the fight against cancer.
Going into Friday night, the county already had raised $250,000 ó about $20,000 ahead of last year at this point.
“In today’s economy,” Moose said, “that’s saying a lot.”
This year’s theme was “Celebrating Hope and Heroes.”
The most important heroes, Goodwin said, are the cancer survivors and their caretakers.
A crowd probably eclipsing 10,000 people poured into the fairgrounds Friday night, and many wore survivor T-shirts, with pink, purple and white among the predominant colors.
Various groups sold food, clothing, bows, bracelets, key chains and the like. There was music and fun things to spend money on, such as a climbing tower, Dunk the Joker and Chaos Jail.
When darkness fell, the traditional luminary trail honored both survivors and those lost to cancer. Music and other activities spread throughout the night. A final lap was part of the closing at 7 a.m. today.Words mentioned more than once during this year’s Relay for Life included “hope,” “thanks,” “trust,” “survive,” “faith,” “care,” “love” and “cure.”
Rhyne helped to organize Living in Pink, which is connected to Rowan Regional Medical Center, about three years ago when she was recovering from a mastectomy.
The group began meeting the first Wednesday of every month at the hospital, and Shoaf has never missed a gathering.
Women in the first stages of breast cancer, those undergoing treatment, those who have finished treatment and caretakers are all part of Living in Pink.
They walked as a group Friday evening in the traditional first lap around the fairgrounds during which the names of cancer survivors were read out loud.
“I couldn’t be without them,” Chris Whitaker said of her Living in Pink friends. “They’re right there for you.”
Whitaker is dealing what what she calls her “fourth round of cancer,” just completing her latest chemotherapy treatments.
Her status?
“It’s not gone, it’s stable,” she said. “That’s what I tell people.”
Betty Ann Brunton organized Maxon Furniture’s Relay for Life booth, which was selling hot dogs and hamburgers to raise funds. She also walked the first lap around the fairgrounds as a cancer survivor.
Brunton dealt with skin cancer three years ago and returns to the doctor every three months for a checkup.
The key with skin cancer is finding it early, she said. Many other people in the crowd survived much more serious battles with cancer, Brunton added, and she strongly supports the Relay for Life’s effort to honor them.
“It’s nice just to recognize what they’ve been through and that they’re still here,” she said.
As another Maxon worker watched the Survivors’ Walk go by, she spied someone she had worked with for many years at the now closed Cannon Mills Swink Plant on U.S. 29.
The woman jumped over the luminaries on the side, rushed to her buddy ó a cancer survivor ó and gave her a hug.
When it comes to cancer, that’s just what friends do.