Letters: Relay participant thanks team leader; remembers loved one

I just wanted to take a minute to give a warm thank you to a very special friend, Jeri Ann Evans.

Jeri Ann has taken on a strong role as captain of our Relay for Life team. She has pulled a great team together. We are the Sutter Strutters. If you're not sure what Relay for Life is about, it is where we, as a community, pull ourselves together for 24 hours to raise awareness and money to fight against cancer.

As a member of this team for the past three years, I can tell you we have always put our hearts into it. It means something to watch our own cancer survivors walk around the track and to read the many names in the luminaries along with listening to the guest speaker who, with no doubt, always makes me cry.

As we sit as part of the crowd I know the speaker will ask us to start standing as he asks how cancer has touched our lives. I know when he says grandparents that's when I stand, for my grandmother passed away before I was born from breast cancer. But this year when I stood up so did my two daughters, 1 and 3 years old. As I looked down at them I thought about the very big part of life my grandmother missed out on. Not only did she miss her granddaughters' lives but also her great-granddaughters'.

Cancer is real and it kills. But thank God for people like Jeri Ann who will always be there for a fight.

Christie Walker

Crescent City