The Rest of the Story.....
The Relay for life is the premier event of the American Cancer Society with over 5,000 separate Relays in towns and cities throughout the world as well as on college and university campuses. Each event lasts twenty four hours and is usually held where there is a track that team members can walk in keeping with the first Relay over 25 years ago in Tacoma, Washington where a single doctor walked a track for twenty-four hours in honor a friend who was fighting cancer. The Relay in Stowe, Vermont is held during the winter on a ski slope and one in Kauai , Hawaii is held on the beach, given their unique locations.
But Relay is more than just walking a track or even raising money. It is a family weekend with each team having their own events as well as Relay events going on. Entertainment, education, games and food and more food and more food for 24 hours! While the message is important and the fund raising essential Relay is so much more. It is said that the only way to understand what Relay is about to to be there. And if you are there once....you will be back and you will be doing more!
The West Bloomfield Relay For life will be on June 4th and 5th 2011 at the West Bloomfield High School in West Bloomfield. If you are not in the West Bloomfield area find out where there is a Relay near you and attend it. Once you do .... you will be back.
ACS-Cancer Action Network is the sister organization to ACS. Under various regulations ACS is not permitted to take certain actions that are essential to getting governmental action on laws and research funding that are necessary to our winning the war against cancer. Among the priorities that ACS/CAN has for 2011 is to maintain the funding for research projects under the National Institutes of Health including the national Cancer Institute. Finding cures for cancer takes lengthy research efforts and projects begun with stimulus funds in 2009 or 2010 most certainly have not reached fruition in January 2011. But much exciting progress is being made and there is little doubt that ultimately this research will produce answers. Unfortunately success will not be effected if the research is curtailed for lack of funds. ACS CAN working through dedicated volunteers throughout the country are in constant contact with our Senators and Representatives and their staff members to gain their support for NIH funding by explaining what is being done and why it is so important.
CAN is truly a grass roots activist organization and funding for NIH research is only one area that it is involved. During the debate on Health Care CAN did not take a position on any of the proposed bills but did present information on what was in the interest of Cancer patients. Over sixty of the individual positions we felt were important were included in the bill . In fact an independent survey indicated that ACS CAN was the most respected and believed organization of its type on the Hill.
At the state level ACS CAN activists have been instrumental in 39 state legislatures having passed smoke free workplace legislation including bars and restaurants. In the case of Michigan it took close to 10 years to be successful but on May st last year the law went into effect and we were officially "smoke free".
Those of you who have been long time readers of the Journal may have noticed that the family section has been continually expanding and not just because of the birth of a new generation of family members. A project that began in 1994 as what was thought to be a relatively small family history has reached amazing proportions and seems to be growing by leaps and bounds! The database of family members now is just under 27,000 people and stretches all the way back to the Fifteenth Century. But of perhaps more interest and certainly personally more important is the way the family has expanded just this past year. In June connections were made with cousins on the Jaeger branch which were enormously important. The Jaeger cousins, most of whom lived in Orange county California and some within a few miles of David and Steven, included 20 first cousins, some of whom gave me photographs of my parents together, Aunts and Uncle and of me as a baby. Also I located a member of the Fauerbach branch living in Texas and a third cousin.
On Caryn's side many cousins were located and in fact we are now putting cousins in touch with cousins they never met before and filling in numerous blanks in the family history of her family as well. It is particularly rewarding to be able to put two people together that did not know each other and yet turn out to be say, third cousins from different branches of the same family. Or, in another case to "talk" to someone in one branch that remembers meeting with Caryn's grandfather or Uncle during World War II and spending time with them when they were in Baltimore. Now we are going further and looking for relatives in other cities where we know some settled. So the saga continues!
You can visit www.inthegenes.org for the history of the family including some photographs. Family members can contact me to get access to to the complete genealogy report or the separate family photo album with almost three hundred collected photos some going back to the mid 1800's.