Location: Soldier Field
Date: Saturday, October 24, 2015; 7:00 - 11:30 am
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| Early morning call again |
The skies were threatening when I arrived at ‘Soldier Field’ and it looked like we
were in for a similar day like “Walk and Roll”. I went over to "Check-In" and saw that several
volunteers were already there. I was in
charge of “Luminaria’s” and there was
a table for us just across the “Information Tent". Kathryn gave me a sign to hold up
so that my volunteers could find me. I
did that and sure enough 2 ladies came forward and introduced themselves as
Carolyn and Xiao Mei. It was a start.
We went over to the table and got our supplies out, which
included some of the “luminaria bags”
that had been made at the “Kickoff”
event. We had several empty bags and
marker pens for people to make some more, though limited in colors with just a
few pink and greens but mostly black pens. Our
biggest challenge though was the wind and I asked them to put some weights on
the bags. Unlike last year there were no
“glow sticks” inside a tunnel, but
rather we were going to tie the bags to a fence on the walk route. We also had a pink ribbon and scotch tape and
Carolyn suggested that we string 5 bags together before putting them on the
fence. I thought that it was a good idea
and may help with the wind.
The registration opened at 8 am and people had already
started coming in. I told my team to go
start recruiting and soon they were getting traffic in, as was I. There were several families in attendance and
I would ask them their team name.
Everyone seemed to be doing this for someone and one girl told me it
that was for her Grandma who had recently passed from Colon cancer. People were decked in pink and wearing all
sorts of paraphernalia. Despite the threat
of rain, everyone’s enthusiasm was high.
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| The "Luminaria Bags" |
I got 3 more volunteers from ‘Target’, Mary, Eddie and Priscilla and I asked Eddie and Priscilla
to start stringing the bags together while Mary went for recruiting. I learned that Mary was in “HR” at ‘Target’ and I told her how much I appreciated their help for the “MLK Celebration of Service” project
that ‘Chicago Cares’ runs every year
and their overall philosophy towards volunteering. Xiao Mei has a daughter in high school and
she mentioned how she had found this opportunity on “Volunteer Match”. I told
her about some of the other projects that she and her daughter could do
together, like “Pet Therapy”. I saw
one of my Committee members doing “Scavenger
Hunt”, where making “Luminaria”
was one of the blocks. I told her to
send over people. In fact, I even walked
over to “Accounting” and told the
ladies there to send people over. Hey, I
was trying.
I was chatting with Mary regarding the weather and she said that
she would do a “reverse rain dance”. I said that in case of rain we would move everything
to the “Survivor Tent”, similar to
what we did for “Walk and Roll”. Lot of people were coming over and we were
busy stringing the bags together. The
walk was starting at 10 am and I said at 9:15 that we should go over to the
fence and start tying the bags to the fence.
It was some distance away and would take us a while to get there. However, since we still had a crowd, I left
behind Priscilla and another ‘Target’
volunteer who had joined us – with her 2 kids – and the rest of us left for the
fence.
We had to go around ‘Soldier
Field’ and it had just started to drizzle when we arrived at our
fence. We started putting the bags on
the fence and in some cases it was difficult to tie due to shorter string. But my team was doing a good job and soon we
had the entire fence covered. I was
amazed that the tape was working, though Mary said that we should use stapler
and thicker ribbon next year. However,
our main concern now was that the drizzle was getting stronger and bags were
getting wet. We weren’t done with all
the bags yet, but I told everyone to call it quits and we started walking
back. We were halfway back when the rain
stopped and my team said that we should return to our fence and finish the job. They said that people had worked hard to make
this and we owed it to them.
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| Despite the rain, my team did a terrific job |
While my team put the remaining bags on another fence
perpendicular to the main one, I had to go around the fence to a field in the
back and collect all the bags that had come off and were now littering the
grounds. By the time I came back they
were completely ruined. We had done the
best we could and came back to our table.
I said that around 11:30 am, we would all go back to remove the
bags. This way majority of the walkers
would have seen and appreciated it. We
would of course have to throw all the bags away since they were now wet. I walked about a bit to see the “Survivor Tent” and some of the other
areas. I saw the lady from two years
ago, the one with the “Croatian”
shirt. Just as I came back to the “Information Tent”, the rain arrived,
and it was a deluge.
It was getting torrential and I felt bad for the walkers,
most of who were still on the course. No
wonder I had seen some of them running the course, rather than walking. Carrie told us to call it quits and asked the
event to be shut down. I was watching
the radar on the phone and said that it would be fine in 15 minutes and it
was. But all the other tents were
coming off, including one which flew away and turned upside down. Fortunately no one was injured. As the rain stopped, I went around to look
for Mary so that we could take the bags down.
I saw her coming over and she was soaked. She said that she had already done that and
all the bags were thrown away. Wow, what
a lady. I took Carolyn with me and we
walked about the field at the back and picked up the bags which had flown
away. It took time to clean and we were
doing our best to avoid the puddles.
Soon we were done and I said bye to Carolyn and left. My team had done a great job…all of
them. Thus finished another year of me
being on the Committee. Who knows if I
will be back next year.
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