Volunteers Honored For Their Efforts Toward Newtown’s 2006 Relay For Life

RIDGEFIELD — On November 8 at the Ridgefield Playhouse, The American Cancer Society honored several Relay For Life volunteers from Newtown.

Lynda Russo, one of the co-chairs for the 2006 event at Newtown High School, was honored with The Sandra C. Labaree Volunteer Values Award.

As stated during the awards ceremony, Mrs Russo “embraces everything the society stands for. As a co-chair for the Relay in Newtown, Lynda is relentless in her quest to raise money and recruit teams. She strives for new and creative ways to promote Relay for Life. As a steward of the donor dollar, she is committed to secure donations for food and supplies and has this amazing way of describing the Relay that ultimately makes others want to be involved too.”

Dominick Posca, Carl Samuelson, and their staff were honored with the Relay For Life Logistics Award for going above and beyond for the Relay For Life of Newtown and their community. From shuttle services for teams and building scaffolding for a giant movie screen to painting the logo on the field within the high school’s stadium, they made everyone they worked with on the Relay event feel good about what they were doing and worked harder to accomplish their goal.

John Voket, an associate editor for The Newtown Bee, was honored with the Media Print Award for his commitment to the Relay, utilizing the pulse of the Newtown community to create compelling, newsworthy, and targeted stories surrounding Relay, along with cancer control messages.

Mary Marinaccio was also honored as one of the local ambassadors who participated in Celebration on the Hill in Washington, D.C., on September 20. Mary is one of 38 of Connecticut’s community ambassadors committed to serving a two–year term.

While in Washington, she shared with legislators her personal cancer story as a caregiver and participated in Relay For Life on the national mall. As a result of her hard work, four of the state’s congressional legislators signed the Congressional Cancer Promise, which is a written commitment on the part of these legislators to fight for cancer related legislation and the majority of our state’s delegation agreed to fight for adequate funding of the National Institutes of Health and the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program.

The 2007 Newtown Relay For Life will take place on June 9–10.

For information about how to form a team or become involved in Relay For Life, call 426-3782 or send email to RelayForLifeOfNewtown@yahoo.com.