Local residents walk for a cause
By CHRISTY WULF
Staff photo
This weekend's Relay for Life is being supported by three teams from Hillsboro. A business team is made up of Chamber of Commerce members, Hillsboro Community Medical Center, and Hillsboro First Mennonite Church has a team.
First Mennonite Church and Friends team is made up of more than 20 members. The team includes Nadine Friesen, Julie Kaiser and her family, Jan Schroeder, Darrell and Lena Knoll, Paul and Chris Unruh, Linda Esau and her sister, Julie and Kelly Linnens, Lloyd and Julie Anderson, Adam and Rachel Wathen, Ray Brandt, Marci Kelsey and her children, Bob Woelk, Elaine Jantzen, and others.
The team is headed by Jantzen, who has organized Relay for Life teams for several years, and assisted by Lena Knoll. It is made up of church members, cancer survivors, and family and friends of cancer survivors and fatalities.
Woelk joined the team partly just because Jantzen asked.
"She's been active for a long time," said Woelk of Jantzen. "I respect her for that."
Woelk is a runner who has recently completed a marathon and thought the relay would be a good workout. This isn't Woelk's first Relay for Life, but he thinks this one might be a little tricky.
"They didn't used to be an all night thing," he said.
Finally, Woelk's decision to join the Relay for Life team is personal. His family like almost all families has been touched by cancer. Woelk's mother died of cancer several years ago, and his brother-in- law is currently fighting cancer.
"Cancer has definitely hit our family," he said.
All the people and families taking part in Relay for Life have made time in their busy lives to support cancer research and the hope of a cure. All of them have been touched one way or another by the disease.
"This is really important," said Jantzen. "There aren't many families around that haven't been touched by cancer. I keep thinking that this will be my last year to head up the committee, but then I hear of another family touched by cancer, and I think I have to keep working. One of these years, it will be my last though."
