By Beth Christian Broschart
The Parsons Advocate
ELKINS – Officials and volunteers gathered Thursday evening to begin planning for the 2016 Randolph/Tucker County Relay for Life, and they are hoping to help gander more participants at all levels from the Tucker County area. This year’s Relay for Life is slated for noon to midnight June 4 at the Town Square in Elkins. More than 40 folks were in attendance for the kickoff meeting held at the Elkins Family Worship Center in Glenmore, and representatives from the Tucker’d Out Teachers said they are ready for the event.
“Our team is comprised of about 10 teachers from Tucker Valley Elementary/Middle School,” said team member Melinda Waybright. “We are going to try and expand and add other teams from Tucker County, but we just haven’t made it that far yet. This is our second year having a Relay for Life team.”
Waybright said the Tucker’d Out Teachers hold a monthly luncheon at school to raise funds.
“We also plan to do T-shirt sales,” Waybright said. “After Christmas break, we held a raffle. We hope folks will come out to help us in the fight to end cancer.”
American Cancer Society specialist Michael Alkire said the event already has 19 teams registered and has already raised nearly $7,000. He said that 150 participants have already signed up for the event. Alkire said they were looking for cancer survivors to register from both Randolph and Tucker counties.
“Survivors – 140 last year and I am sure we can get more this year,” Alkire said. “We had a lot of people come in from Tucker County last year. I think we can pull in more survivors and teams from there are well.”
Alkire said he was really upset when he lost the separate Relay for Life event in Tucker County.
“We just did not have enough people to do it, so we combined it with Randolph County,” Alkire said. “I would like to get back in that area. There are lots of great people in Tucker County and I would like to get folks, especially survivors, involved again.”
The planning meetings are slated for March 10 and May 26. Team Captain meetings are slated for Feb. 11, March 10, April 14 and May 12. Other fundraising events are slated before the Relay for Life event, and include the Relay for Life Randolph/Tucker County Wide Auction for April 9.
The Survivor Breakfast is scheduled for 9 to 11 a.m. May 21 at the Beverly Fire Hall. Alkire said they are looking for more Tucker County cancer survivors to register for the survivor breakfast and the Relay for Life event.
The theme for this year’s Relay for Life is Cancer: Not here, not there, not anywhere.
Folks interested in volunteering, registering a team or attending the Survivor Breakfast should contact organizer Brittany Small at 304-704-5166 or Alkire at 304-645-7970.