Location: Soldier Field
Date: Saturday, October 25, 2014; 6:45 am-12:15 pm
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| Another early morning |
Finally the day had arrived - the
‘2014 Making Strides Walk’. I walked over to ‘Soldier Field’ while it was still dark outside and when I arrived,
there was very little activity around the main green. I saw Carrie and she told me to help with the
planting of the “Pink Ladies” that we
had made earlier in the week. I went
over and saw that Katie and another volunteer were already hard at work in the “Promise Garden”. I got down on all fours and realized that the
ground was hard and it was difficult to just push them in the ground. While inserting one, I broke the
stick and then used that to make my insertions. However, this was not an easy assignment and
took us a long time to get even a few of them in there. It was time for a meeting and we had hardly
made a dent in this task. I told Carrie
that with 10 volunteers, we could perhaps get this done in 30 minutes, but
everyone else had already been assigned.
So she said that lets abandon this idea and that we should take out
whatever we had put in. One volunteer
had stayed back to continue with this and I had go and tell her that all of her
hard work had been for nothing. I told
her to take a break while Katie and I removed the “pink ladies”, which was another back breaking task. Finally, we were done and while the “promise garden” would have been a
wonderful idea, it just wasn’t feasible the way we were thinking of doing
it.
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| 'Advocacy Tent', just as envisioned |
There were many ‘High School’ volunteers who had come
and for all of us on the committee, our main job was to supervise them. All the tents were up and I saw Le’Loni
standing outside the ‘Advocacy Tent’
and it had the “purse decoration” at
its entrance, exactly the way Le’Loni had envisioned it months ago during our
planning sessions. She was asking people
to come in and sign a petition that would allow for increased funding for cancer
screening. I went over to the ‘Kids and Family Activity Tent’ where
various events would be staged such as, “Hair
Braiding”, “Tattoos” and “Scavenger Hunt”. The last one in particular was another thing
that we had been discussing during our meetings, where people would take a form
that had bunch of activities and after completing them, would turn their form
in. Then, they had to be near the stage
at 11:15 am when the winners would be announced. I recruited two teenagers to walk about and
get people excited for this event.
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| Designing "Luminarias" |
There were 2 committee members
who were in charge of the ‘Kids &
Family’ station and so I went over to the next station where Katie was
getting people to make “Luminarias” This involved them decorating paper bags in
honor of someone and then these bags would be placed along the walk route with
glow sticks in them. It was a fantastic
concept. Once again, we encouraged our
young volunteers to recruit people and also asked them to make bags
themselves. Through this a lot of
creative bags were made. Katie said that
these bags were to placed inside the ‘McCormick
Place’ tunnel and we would have to leave at 9 am in order to be ready for
the walkers. Since there was some time
left prior to that, I went over to the ‘Survivor
Tent’ to check if they required any help.
One of our committee members was managing this area and asked me to
direct the visitors on what they were supposed to do. Essentially, they were selecting a bag with ”Hope Stone”, and they had a choice in
the color of the bag, stone as well as the pen, which they used to write
inspirational words on the stone. Then I
was giving them a slip with a message that they were a rock and that they were
strong. They were encouraged to carry
their rock with them as a reminder.
Finally, before leaving the tent we were asking them to sign the “Thank You” card. Many women participated and one of them even
broke down as she was hugged by our committee member, who herself is a “survivor”.
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| With the glow stick |
It was almost 9 am and I went
back to the “Luminaria” station. It was now time to take the bags to the
tunnel, along with all of the glow sticks that were in a box. That box was heavy and luckily for us, Carrie
came over in a golf cart to drive Katie and the supplies over to the tunnel. That left me with all of the volunteers and I
said that I would lead them there. It
was a long walk to get there and I heard one girl say something which sounded
very much like “Materials Science”. I was delighted to hear that she wanted to
study polymers and so spent the rest of the walk to the tunnel discussing that
with her. We finally arrived at the
tunnel and saw that Katie had already started setting up the bags with the cracked
glow sticks in them. All of us grabbed a
bunch of sticks and bags and went up and down the tunnel. The walk was starting at 10 am and we were
done with 30 minutes to spare. This meant
that the sticks were dying and the light would be gone by the time the walkers
got here. Fortunately for us, we had
plenty of sticks and so around 10 am we went and replenished the bags.
This path through the tunnel was supposed to be a
solemn walk, with the walkers respecting those in whose memory the bags had been
made. But as people passed through the
tunnel, there was screaming, yelling and even some running. We as volunteers stationed there, were
supposed to tell them to be quiet, but it was almost impossible to regulate
these many people. Some folks were taking
the glow sticks out of the bags and even though I was telling them not to do
so, they wanted these as souvenirs. Yes it was rude, but at least these people were here to participate. Better idea would have been to have signs before you
entered the tunnel, in order to educate people on what we were trying to do. It
would be a shame to abandon this next year and we can certainly do a better job.
Once the crowd had dissipated, we
collected the bags and supplies and walked back. Even with the many sticks that we had used,
there were still several remaining in the boxes and it was a heavy load to carry. I asked Katie what would happen to the bags
and she said that they would be thrown away.
I told her that I would not be responsible for that, especially since so many
people had made them in someone's memory and we should take them back rather than
putting them in a garbage can. Back at
the main green I walked about seeing all of the other activities that were
going on. We heard all of the speeches,
including announcement for the winner of the “Costume Contest” as well as the “Scavenger Hunt”. Ted was on
the mike and was doing a fantastic job as usual.
At noon Carrie wanted all
committee members to come to the stage and we would be announcing the money
that had been raised, through holding banners with individual numbers. We all stood facing the crowd in proper order, and as Ted
announced the number, held up the banner over our head. We were done and I told Carrie that we should
have a debrief meeting to discuss improvements and she said that we could do
that during our holiday get together in December. I left after what had been another successful
year, not just with the walk, but the camaraderie and the friendships that we
had made.
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