Wow, a whole year has gone by since I was asked to chair the Relay For Life of Whitehall.

This important relay covers the Whitehall-Coplay, Northampton and Catasauqua Area School districts.

I have had a great year talking with cancer survivors and listening to their stories, attending cancer summits and meetings and even a lobby days event in Harrisburg.

I have heard about the pain and sorrow experienced by families who have lost a family member or friend to cancer. Throughout the year, I have enjoyed working with and getting to know the people who work very hard behind the scenes to put together your Relay For Life event. I especially would like to thank my co-chair, Brian Skurski, for doing a phenomenal job with the logistics and musical entertainment.

These selfless individuals donate their time and talent to bring you the best relay ever. Two groups of people work on the relay – the teams and committee members. Relay teams consist of people like you and me – cancer survivors, families of those who passed away from the disease, friends, neighbors and coworkers. Committee members work behind the scenes to coordinate all the aspects of a relay event that runs smoothly.

This year we had 27 teams and 209 participants. We brought in $71,141 with 95 percent raised from the teams and 5 percent by local business sponsors. Our expenses totaled $5,150 giving a net total of $65,991. Our projected net goal was $60,244.

We sold 244 luminaria bags, registered 55 cancer survivors for our survivor dinner and had 105 people sign up for our Cancer Action Network. We are the only relay team out of the seven local Lehigh Valley teams to reach our goal before the relay began June 21, and we are the only relay organization to reach the Cancer Action Network goal. As a result, we were crowned the ACS-ACS (American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network) Relay for the second straight year.

This money is donated to local Lehigh Valley programs helping cancer patients and educating the general public about the services available. A portion also goes to fund national cancer research. I found it heartwarming to see that four researchers receiving grants are from Pennsylvania universities. I researched what these people are working on and it is utterly fascinating. Two grants are for five years of research and two are for 10 years.

You can be part of the 2014 relay. One way is to start a team, consisting of three or more people. Each person is asked to raise a minimum of $100, which equals five of your friends donating $20 each. The individual teams set their own goals.

Doreen Huber is serving as our 2014 team recruitment and retention chair. If you are interested in forming a team or would like information on a team, contact her at dorhub@yahoo.com.

The first team meeting will be our kick-off meeting 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 8. More on the team meeting will come in next month's article.

You can help behind the scenes, too, as a committee member. Committees include accounting, advocacy, Chinese auction, concession stand, event logistics, Facebook, kid's activities, luminaria sales, mission, musical entertainment, onlline coordinator, publicity, survivor dinner and day of event team administration. Three new committees have also been formed to coordinate the volunteers.

I had so many people contact me to help out the day of the event, but I had no one to coordinate our needs in other areas, such as what times we needed such volunteers.

The event lasts for 24 hours because cancer never sleeps and cancer patients often go through the dark, difficult times before they experience the light of day. We need activities so teams and the public can continue to experience an enjoyable time overnight.

We also need a committee to work on a "Bark For Life" event in the spring. Families and their dogs will come together for a few hours during the day and complete a one-mile walk to honor the caregiving qualities of their canine best friends and cancer survivors. We offer doggie games, top dog and dress-up contests, team and community fundraising, music and food and special dog guest demonstrations by groups handling therapy, police and rescue dogs.

Family and professional dogs bring the warm hearted feelings of wagging tails to the ACS Bark For Life to make the bark a happy and meaningful community event to support the mission of the American Cancer Society. If this event is successful, which I know it will be, we would like to coordinate one for October of next year during Halloween.

In 2013, we only had 13 people helping behind the scenes. For an event of our size, we could use four or five times as many people. Can you help? Our first committee meeting will be held 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 26, at the New City View Diner on MacArthur Road and Grape Street. Come see what we are all about. For more information, contact me by phone or by email at shari@sharinoctor.com.

Thank you again to the Whitehall-Coplay School District, Fellowship Community, the individual teams, committee people, The Lehigh Valley Press, businesses, those who provided the entertainment, the mayors and school districts in our market area, the boys and girls Scouts, church volunteers and you, the public, who supported us and allowed us to reach our goals!

We are hoping to have a fabulous 2014 year and even more importantly, a world filled with less cancer and more birthdays.