Teams Walk and Walk and Walk During Relay for Life

Katie Sullivan and her teammates walked in circles—ovals, actually—for a total of seven hours between Friday evening and Saturday morning.

By 5:40 Saturday morning, Sullivan and some other members of the Keystone Club were ready to sleep.

The team raised at least $3,000 for the American Cancer Society in its fifth Woburn Relay For Life, this year’s third-highest team total, according to the team.

The Intrepid Keystone Club team from the Boys and Girls Club was one of 36 teams that participated in this year’s walk, according to the cancer society’s Rebecca Harnois.

The event raised a total of about $46,000, Harnois said.

The goal of the relay is to have at least one team member on the track for some 12 hours, according to the cancer society. Through more than 90 relays this year, the cancer society expects to raise more than $11 million. The money is used, the society explained, for research; services for patients, like transportation to treatments; 24-hour telephone support; literature; and a new generation of cancer-fighting medicines.

The Keystone Club fields a team every year, according to Woburnite Sullivan. Last year, she visited friends who were doing the walk. Five years ago, her grandmother died, she said, of lung cancer.

Stephanie Ortiz walked with the team for the second year. Ortiz, of Woburn, said she knows people with cancer. Last year team members walked for seven hours, 35 minutes, Ortiz said. She wanted to break that record.

Teammate Sarah Norton, also from Woburn, doesn’t personally know anyone with cancer. But she “wanted to fight for the cause.”

While Norton and Ortiz planned to go home Saturday and sleep, members of the Teal Team planned to do what they would normally do on a Saturday when they left Liberty Park Field:  go to work, do laundry. They walked and slept during the relay, explained team member Heather Wells. Wells’ mother died two years ago from ovarian cancer, Wells said. The team name comes from the color of the ribbon that represents ovarian cancer. Next year, team walkers plan to wear a pedometer to find out how far they trod in the relay.

Like the Teal Team, Gummy’s Girls were walking for the second year. Fresh in their minds, team members said, was Michaela Quigley’s grandmother, Gert Reil, who very recently died of cancer.  Other team members also know people who have faced cancer. Sharon Murphy said her mother had it three times, and both her parents, Bob and Joan McCauley, died of cancer.

By about 7:15 Saturday morning, all of the teams had left the field. The air was heavy with moisture. The Keystone Club team had gotten wet at night, not from rain, they said, but from the field’s sprinkler system.

One of the most touching parts of the walk, according to event co-chairman Judy Amoroso, a cancer survivor, is the luminaria ceremony on Friday evening, when candles are lit in honor and in memory of people with cancer.

She walked with the Fighting Irish team. Every year, right after the relay, her team says “No” when she asks them if they’ll do another relay, Amoroso said. A couple of days later, she said, they reconsider and agree to walk again the next year.