This month 2,500 people will have the same number of reasons why they chose to participate in this year's Relay for Life July 14 & 15. I know why I'm going to be there.

One of the relay's founders, Larry Olson, a former junior high school principal in the Eureka schools, said that they expect 250 teams this year, each with eight to 12 members. A tent city will spring up for 24 hours at College of the Redwoods' track. People will laugh. People will cry. People will "walk" in wheel chairs and with guide dogs. Kids in a health patrol will issue citations for a sunscreen number that is too low. Mothers, fathers, grandparents and children will camp overnight together.

It is the ninth annual Relay for Life, the biggest fundraiser for the American Cancer Society (ACS). Olson said that last year's relay brought 177 teams, 2,000 people and raised $418,000 for cancer research
and support of people living with cancer. It was the largest dollar relay in California, second in the nation in our size population.

The Eureka relay is one of hundreds across the nation. They started in Tacoma, Washington, in 1985, when a local doctor walked a 24-hour marathon around a local track. Last year, more than 2,400 communities held a Relay for Life, 1.5 million Americans participated in them and 250,000 cancer survivors walked the opening laps.

The local event was begun in 1992 when Larry Olson and his wife Jean, two ACS volunteers, were visiting with ACS staff member Kim Coelho and her husband Marty. They were kicking around ideas for a fundraiser, and Olson wanted it to be fun.

"We didn't plan to build the biggest event in California," Olson said. "We had been hosting an annual gala and auction. We wanted something different that would appeal to everyone.

"That first morning we weren't sure anybody was going to come. But 100 people ran that year counting babies and seeing eye dogs."

Olson said the 24-hour idea is to celebrate fundraising. Someone had the idea to dedicate the first lap of each year's relay to survivors. The luminaria ceremony began in the late 1980s when someone at another track forgot to contract for the stadium lights. Now the luminaria Ceremony of Hope - candles inside of white paper bags lining the track are dedicated in memory and honor of friends and family members with cancer - is done at all the relays, Olson said.

Amid the encampment in the center of the track are tents where ACS volunteers will teach breast self-exam, provide skin screenings and offer hair cuts in the Look Good Feel Better tent. Activism tents will encourage people to contact supervisors to use the tobacco funds for health purposes and not for roads. California Assemblywoman Virginia Strom-Martin had a team last year and will have one again this year.

Olson said that 40 people make up the committee to put on the event. The original four founders are minus one of their members, and Olson has a bigger personal stake now in the relay-his wife Jean died within seven weeks of a brain tumor diagnosis in 1998.

For myself, I'll walk the survivors' lap this year. In December my thyroid was removed because of a papillary carcinoma. It doesn't seem like the "Big C" because I didn't have to have the strenuous chemotherapy or
radiation treatments. But as I think of the ease and suddenness with which a carcinoma could grow in my body, the fragility of life fills me. It's my life. I'm grateful to walk.

Barbara Clark is editor of Senior News. You can e-mail her at srnews@northcoast.com. Cancer survivors are encouraged to come walk or be wheeled around the first lap. Call the ACS office to get involved, 707-442-1436. In Crescent City call 707-464-8277 for their relay same dates.