My Honorees for the 2013 Crawlin' Crab Half Marathon

When I walk, or perhaps walk-run if my knee improves, the 2013 Crawlin' Crab Half Marathon on October 6, my race shirt will be covered with honoree names.  Some will be my honorees, and some will be those that people who donated ask me to remember.  If you want to donate in honor or memory of a loved one who has or had any type of cancer, here is the link to my TNT site.

Here is my list, to be updated as people make requests of me...

PRINCIPAL HONOREES for this special race are three friends who died from cancers in the last two and a half years:

Ed Stone - The race is on what would have been Ed's 44th birthday, and this is the main reason that I picked this race.  Ed was a great guy, and a 24 year cancer survivor.  He barely survived leukemia at age 19, and battled cancers three more times.  The final one was melanoma, believed to be caused by the full-body radiation he received as a 19 year old.  He never gave up until it was clear that his life was coming to an end, which it did this past January.  I will always remember Ed as a determined and inspirational young man.  His widow, Leslie, will be running the Crawlin' Crab with the team this fall.

Judy Zettel - Judy was a great friend to us.  When she gave us the shocking news of her multiple myeloma diagnosis in December 2010, we felt like she would find a way to survive for at least a few years and keep enjoying life as a wife, mom, grandma, and friend.  But exactly a month later, too ill to even begin treatment, she died from this awful illness, along with leukemia.  I'll never forget seeing her for the last time as she lay in the bed in a coma.  My last words to her, other than goodbye, were that we will have a cure some day.  Her last and 66th birthday was just a couple of weeks prior to her death in January 2011.

Faith Eury - What a wonderful young woman Faith was!  She found out in the winter of 2009 that she had stage 4 Hodgkin's lymphoma, which is the same cancer that I had and is fairly curable.  Faith pulled together a team, Faith's Hope, to walk in Light the Night that fall - even though she was still going through treatments.  Her team was one of the top fundraising teams in Virginia, and I was proud to be a part of it.  Faith went into remission for a while, but the Hodgkin's came back late in 2011 and she passed away in February, 2012 at age 43 (the same as Ed).  She was too ill to really begin treatment for the second bout with this disease.  She is missed by many, many people ...

and also by Henry, her beloved papillion.

I will wear a photo of Ed, Judy, and Faith on my Crawlin' Crab race shirt.

My other honorees:

IN MEMORY OF: Ann Ritter (my sister, died from metastisized breast cancer 5/30/2011 - I will wear Ann's photo, too); Magdalena Gentile; Brenda Blywiss, Elliot, Rita Conkle, Melanie Powers (passed away at age 43 after a very difficult seven month battle on May 22, 2013); Maurice "BJ" Beck (died in 2009 at age 16 from acute myelogenous leukemia), Helen Jones Stanphill, Gerry Adamson, Lynn Armuth, Miriam Fogel, Rizalino  Dilag Sr., Barbara Pereyra, Kristin Kalinke, Bernard Kain, Vivian Crews, Patty Lynn Sellers, Lorene Di Lauro, Francis Trail Saunders, Joe Boisvert, Susan Lord, Nancy Dionne, Billy Gill, Suman Kamat, Michael Estes, Denise Pena, Lillian Kerby, Shirley Gibford, Gary Adams, Robert C. "Bub" Douglas

IN HONOR OF: Cora Schenberg, Bill Zettel, Nicki Morgan, Kristi Garstang, Christine Grudinskas, Chris Ritter, Emma McFeeley, Emily Griffin, Paul Zamecnik, Nancy Deaver, Robin Yodor, Elayne Minich, Dayton Richmond, Nancy Brown, Linda Silver, Rena Roszell, "J" (you know who you are even though you asked me not to write your name on my shirt so I won't), Donna Hammond, Mindy Fast, Barbara Marx, Rob Larsen, Debbie Anderson, Debbe Harless, Laura Hall, Rhoda Ritter, Dave, Lila, Natalie, Carl Kain, Leona Held, Harry Grier; Meighan Daily, Campbell Brandt, Virginia Vaillancourt, Jordan Shahbaz, Bill Ellsworth, Alexander L. Ross, Linda Schmidt, Taquisha Jeffries