Seven thousand walk for cancer cure
Published: September 3, 2003
As Terry Wiley of Northborough walked along the shores of Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester yesterday, she thought about the specialness of her friendship with Debbie Horohoe, who died of colon cancer last year at the age of 46.
“She was an awesome person. You find so few true good friends during the course of your life, it’s tough when you lose one,” said Wiley. She and 21 others were part of the Debbie’s Angels team that took part in the Walk to Cure Cancer.
“Debbie and I met when we bought new houses in the same area in Northborough. I had just moved from Philadelphia and she was like my family. Right from the start she was like a sister to me.”
The walk is a fund-raising partnership with the working men and women of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and the UMass Memorial Cancer Center. In total, more than 7,000 people took part in the walk and raised $600,000 to support research at the UMass Memorial Cancer Center.
“It’s truly the teams that make the walk,” said Susan D. Wagner, spokeswoman for the Walk to Cure Cancer.
“They go out and celebrate surviving, being in treatment and remember the lives of people lost to cancer. They turn it from something that could be so negative into something so positive.
“The goal of every team is to keep cancer from happening to other families by finding a cure,” Wagner said.
The walk celebrated its fifth anniversary yesterday, and has raised more than $2 million over the last four years.
The walk was co-founded by Bob Haynes, president of the AFL-CIO and Dottie Manning of Marlborough.
Manning and her husband, Dan, also started the Our Danny Cancer Fund after their son, Danny Jr., a sophomore at Worcester State College, died from complications from leukemia.
“My husband was police chief at UMass Medical School where Danny had treatments, so we established the fund at UMass to be used strictly for cancer research,” Manning said.
Two years later when Manning’s husband, Dan, died of cancer, Bob Haynes approached Dottie about starting the walk.
“Bob was a good friend of my husband and proposed that union families as well as others get involved and start this walk for cancer.”
Manning remains a strong force in fighting cancer.
“The walk (yesterday) pumped me up for the whole year. Just to see all of the 7,000 people there for the same cause, helps my grief so much,” said Manning.
“A lot of them are survivors and that reminds me that we are controlling cancer. We’re in the battle and we’re a team. We are going to find our answers through research,” said Manning, a former guidance counselor at Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School.
The walk, which is one or five miles, has become one of the largest walks in central Massachusetts.
“It will be bigger next year because you have to respond to cancer. You can’t let it take over your life. I refuse to let one word — cancer — dominate my life. I am going to fight to make sure it doesn’t. It just takes time, money and research,” Manning said.
The weather for yesterday’s fund-raiser was perfect, according to Wiley.
“It wasn’t sunny, but it was very comfortable. The toughest thing was remembering when Debbie and I were at the walk together three years ago.”
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