Diana Panter will wear a T-shirt bearing the names of Brock friends and loved ones who have battled cancer.
Diana Panter will wear a T-shirt bearing the names of Brock friends and loved ones who have battled cancer.
Diana Panter knows some of the names of people who have been touched by cancer.
She’s seen co-workers’ lives impacted by the disease. She’s watched the struggles of her mother, her cousin and her mother’s cousin enough to know that behind the statistics are the identities of family and friends and the people who care for them.
Panter will take some of their names on the road with her when she does the Rankin Cancer Run on May 29. She will join Brock’s Community Connections team to run five kilometres through St. Catharines raising money for cancer research. She will run wearing a T-shirt covered in names collected from the Brock community.
“I want to show how many people it’s touched,” said the publications and Convocation events assistant in the Office of the Registrar. “If people haven’t experienced it directly, usually they have a friend or relative it’s touched. This is just a way to acknowledge that.”
Some of the names represent people who have survived cancer. Others are relatives Brock employees have lost. Some are full names, while others are less specific, like “Anna” or “Grandma K.”
Panter has more than 50 names so far. She’d like to get more. She may drop off the T-shirt at various departments to have them add names, she said. She can also be contacted at 905-688-5550 x3429, or dpanter@brocku.ca
The Brock team still needs runners or walkers. Anyone interested can email Jamie Wheeler at jw05qt@brocku.ca and include their T-shirt size. Participants can also sign up online at secure.rankincancerrun.com/register/member and join the Brock University team.
Participants can run or walk one kilometre or five kilometres. In the past four years, the run has raised $1,380,000.
