Back in the Dark Ages (or when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, as I used to tell my students), when I was in college, my service sorority (Gamma Sigma Sigma) helped raise money each year for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. We worked with a service fraternity that did what was called The Push for St. Jude. The guys literally pushed a wheelbarrow (I think–memory is a little fuzzy) the 125 miles from our campus to the hospital in Memphis, a long walk made even longer by collecting money for donors along the way. I participated in a walk through Jackson, Tennessee, on a very cold January day, and the memory still lingers.
That was the beginning of my devotion to this charity. Living in the same town in which I went to college, I know and have known people who have benefited personally from the hospital. Math-a-Thons in the schools, donations from organizations, fund-raising events sponsored by parents of surviving children or even children who succumbed to childhood cancer, and other activities keep the research hospital ever present in our lives.
How fitting, then, that one of my sons married an occupational therapist with St. Jude. How ironic that he should meet this incredible young woman with a heart for children and the emotional fortitude to be strong and encouraging to them while they go through treatment. Through her, I’ve learned even more about the hospital and what it does, and it simply is incredible how far-reaching the impact of St. Jude is. They do so much more than treat their own patients. Their reach is world-wide, and their mission is clear. Let’s save as many children as we can.
But let me go back a bit. Over the years, I had heard about the marathons held in various cities across the country to raise money for St. Jude, and I really wanted to be a part of it. I was a runner in college but switched to fitness walking, an activity I have never stopped doing and an activity I credit for me being my age and being so healthy I take no meds at all except for the eye vitamins for my macular degeneration.
Oops, off track there. Back to the marathon. I wanted to do it, but a marathon is too long. I learned there was a 5K, a 10K, a half-marathon, and a full marathon. Our niece does the full marathons each year (she’s in her mid-forties and still running them), and she was a good source of information about the event in Memphis and what it involved. I was thrilled to learn I didn’t have to run it, that there are actually lots of people who walk it or do a combination of walking and jogging. I couldn’t envision what it was like, and I had the crazy notion that I’d be so slow, I’d be at the end of the line and last one to finish and all that. I didn’t want to be stranded in Memphis, lost and wondering where to go, and I couldn’t find anyone willing to walk it with me.
So I procrastinated. I used my long work hours as an excuse. “I don’t have time to train,” I said. Or “I don’t want to do it alone.” Or even “The race is the first Saturday in December. I don’t like cold weather.” I made excuses but still dreamed of doing it.
With retirement in May, 2018, I realized I couldn’t make excuses anymore. I had all the time in the world to train. I would do it alone because I’d been reassured I would never be alone wandering the streets of downtown Memphis. And the weather? I’d just have to be a big girl and suffer through it.
I shouldn’t have worried, and I shouldn’t have waited so many years to do it. It was 70 degrees that day, the race being delayed an hour due to storms that had to get out of the way. Twenty-six thousand people were lined up in front of the FedEx Forum, and my husband and daughter-in-law helped me find my corral. When you sign up for the event, you give them a time limit you think you need to finish the race, then you are assigned a corral based upon your projected time.
I signed up that I would finish the 13.1 miles in four hours. I finished in three hours and seventeen minutes. Yes, I did jog some, but I couldn’t help it with all the excitement and the adrenaline pumping. At about mile marker 7, I began to wonder if I could finish it, but I found my second wind. At every mile marker, someone was handing us water or Gatorade. There were outdoor toilets if you needed them along the way. Part of the route took us by the Mississippi River. Part of it took us across the St. Jude campus, where employees, parents, and some patients were lined up to cheer us on and give us high five’s with those foam hands. Residents cheered us on from condo balconies. “You can do it, Pam!” they’d shout. My name was on the label (can’t think of another word for it right now) attached to the front of my shirt. Also attached to that label/sign was a tracking device so my husband and children could follow my progress on their phones. That same device recorded my time.
I know this is sideways, but I couldn’t figure out how to flip it, so…be creative in viewing!
Can you tell how important this event was to me? It was the highlight of 2018, more than my retirement, more than anything that year.
This year, however, the race can’t take place in Memphis. Instead, they have planned a virtual event in which participants do the races in their own towns and turn in their times. It won’t be as much fun. I’ll miss the energy from the other participants and the spectators. I’ll miss the camaraderie of fellow-racers who greet each other and cheer each other along. I’ll miss running across the St. Jude campus (I had to run that part, no way could I take the easy way and walk while seeing those kids and their families and knowing what their struggles might be), and I’ll miss the feeling of being a part of something bigger than myself.
In a way, though, I guess I will be. I may be walking a route in my town alone, but I’ll know that the money I have raised for the event is definitely going to something greater than myself.
You, too, can be a part of something bigger than yourself. Go online and donate. You don’t have to be a regular donor. You can just give one time. You can donate to my fundraising page if you’d like. Here’s the link:
Thanks for any help you can give to the patients of St. Jude!
Life As I know it 
Thanks for thinking of the children needing help.
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