Under a sunny August sky different community groups, local residents and cancer survivors gathered from August 2-3 for the Relay for Life of Culver City at West L.A. College.
“Thank you so much for being out here and for your dedication to relay for life,” West L.A. President Nabil Abu-Ghazaleh said. “This our second year hosting the relay at West L.A. College and hopefully more into the future; this a fabulous community event but it is a very specific event that we all feel close to our hearts.”
The two-day, which a day prior to kicking off had nine teams and 51 participants registered according to their website, had cancer survivor and Culver City resident Elaine Hente who was the day’s survivor speaker.
“I am Elaine Hente and I am a breast cancer survivor,” she said in her opening remarks to the crowd of survivors, supporters and participants. “I am cancer free for seven and a half years. When I got the call that I had a lump I thought that was the end of me.”
Celebrating the survival tales of people like Hente, honoring the memory of those who lost to the disease and recognizing caregivers are all part of the relay’s mission, which at its core is dedicated to raising funds to find a cure.
“Challenging is that sometimes people do not understand the reason why we relay for 24 hours but we relay because cancer never sleeps and neither should we,” Senior Manager with Relay For Life Bazillia Gutierrez, Who oversees 20-25 events regionally, said. “The greatness of it is that once you are in, it is community owned and it becomes very personal. No matter what relay you go to, every community takes it on and personalizes it. That is what is great about it.”
After the opening ceremony and the survivors’ lap people particpants walk around the track to raise funds and which is a replica of the original relay in May 1985 when Dr. Gordy Klatt, in Tacoma, Washington, took similar steps to raise money for the American Cancer Society.
After having witnessed the effects of cancer as a doctor, Klatt took it upon himself to use his experience as a marathon runner and asked his friends join and walk or run for certain periods of time during a 24-hour period for a nominal fee. By the end of that 24-hour period, $27,000 were raised and more than 83 miles had been walked, but more than that the Relay for Life was born.
“What makes relay a success is all of our returning teams plus the new teams. People can get relay burned out when they do it for so long because it takes a lot out of you,” Relay For Life Specialist Kimberlee Smith said. “Retaining our past participants, our past survivors and our past team captains engaging in reaching out and recruiting is challenging.”
In Culver City the relay has been close to existence for close to a decade.
“You have seen the transition of the event; it has gone form the high school to the college so you have seen youth participation, young professionals participate and a bit of an older demographic,” Gutierrez said. “You have seen it evolve over the years; it is great that it is not stagnate and it is constantly changing to adapt to what that particular demographic or community looks like that particular year.”
