Guest Column: Reflecting on this year’s Relay for Life

I have never been prouder to say that I’m a resident of Malverne.

As I looked on at the mass of people who attended the second annual Relay for Life in Malverne on May 4, tears both of sorrow and happiness flowed down my face. I knew, in my heart, that we had all, as a village, come together and done something truly great.

Over the years, I’ve lost family, friends, neighbors, and business associates to cancer. My wife, Mary, is a 10-year survivor of breast cancer.

I couldn’t sit idly by any longer without getting myself involved in fundraising to help find a cure. Now, I am a lifelong volunteer with the American Cancer Society — I hope that someday,no one will have to suffer from this disease.

In 2011, I became a member of the planning and staging committee of Malverne’s first Relay for Life. I was asked, this year, to serve as a co-chairman for the event with Mike Taylor, who coaches Malverne High School’s JV girls’softball and who brought the event to Malverne.

I fully immersed myself into making this year’s event bigger and better than the prior year. My time was spent speaking at schools to children, interfacing with the Malverne Board of Education, speaking at Malverne village meetings and civic and community group meetings.

I promoted the event in any way I could think of and I spoke from my heart.

We received full support from Malverne school district administrators, teachers, coaches and students. The event became a fundraising machine.

The night before the event, I was like a child on Christmas Eve, eager with anticipation. I woke the next morning to the sound of thunder and pouring rain. My thought was: Please, Lord, get it over with now so we can have a great event.

All morning long, the weather forecast for the night of the event was not sounding good. But around 2:00 p.m., as Paul Gruol (director of special events for the ACS) and I were deciding what to do, the sun started to shine. We went ahead with preparing for an outside event — tents were erected, banners hung, signs put on the track, and luminaries were situated around the high school track field. By 5:00 p.m., the crowd started to drift in, in good numbers, while the Survivors Dinner was taking place in the high school lunchroom.