NHS Teacher Organizes Teams

For Cancer ‘Relay For Life’

By Jeff White

Newtown High School English teacher Kerry Baldwin has seen family members and close friends lose the fight against cancer. With the devastating disease hitting so close to home, she finds herself compelled to help in any way she can.

This year, she will take to the track.

Ms Baldwin is currently organizing teams of high school students that will enter the American Cancer Society’s Tribury Relay for Life, to be held at Pomperaug High School June 3 and 4.

The Tribury Relay for Life, which will draw primarily from Woodbury, Southbury, and Middlebury, yet will overlap with neighboring towns, including Newtown, is a 24 hour walk-a-thon in which teams keep an ambulatory vigil to commemorate those struggling with the disease, and those who have succumbed to it.

Teams comprised of eight to 15 people take turns on the track walking or running in shifts. The Tribury Relay for Life is slated to begin at 9 am June 3 and will draw to a close at 9 the following morning.

Currently, five teams from Newtown High School are planning on participating in the relay. The school’s Key Club is contributing two teams, while the Charity Club, Student Government, and Ms Baldwin’s AP English class will each contribute one team to the effort.

Although the event is a fundraiser and memorial, it will also have the fun of a competition, as Ms Baldwin hopes NHS teams will create team names and themes particular to each group.

“It really is very much a community event,” Ms Baldwin says, adding that participating in the Relay for Life is a good way for students to develop a habit of community service.

Each participant in the Relay for Life must pay $10 as an entry fee, and is expected to raise a minimum of $100 for the American Cancer Society. Sponsors can come from family members, area businesses, and churches, among others.

Although five teams have already been formed, Ms Baldwin wants to challenge more students, along with NHS faculty members, to form their own teams for the event.

And in a student body as large as that of NHS, there promise to be students who have a variety of reasons why they might want to take on such a cause. Some students are experiencing personal struggles with cancer, while others simply know of friends or friends of friends fighting it.

Although participants are carrying their own personal experiences and stories to the Relay for Life, the symbolism of the event — from the survivors’ walk that kicks off the relay to the bright glow of the luminaries lining the track for those who have lost their lives to cancer — promises to galvanize the different reasons people have for walking.

Ms Baldwin says that volunteers are also needed for the various activities that will be ongoing along the walk’s periphery. For her part, she is manning the Survivors’ Tent Committee. But there will also be a silent auction, musical entertainment, prizes, a raffle, and a survivors’ dinner, all of which are in need of volunteers.

Proceeds from the 2000 Tribury Relay for Life will support a variety of American Cancer Society programs, such as I Can Cope, Reach for Recovery, and Camp Rising Sun, for children with cancer.

Ms Baldwin remains excited that this year NHS will be able to send a strong contingent to Pomperaug High School for the Relay for Life. She encourages any Newtown student, staff member, or resident interested in participating in the event to call her in the high school’s English department.