Special
Events - Lehigh-Poconos PH Fun Walk for a Cure
May 20, 2006
Rowing the Boat While Building It; Our Maiden Voyage
By Joan Stevenson
Event Coordinator and Lehigh-Poconos PH Support Group Leader
The Lehigh-Poconos (PA) Fun Walk for a Cure planning committee convened for the first time in August 2005. The committee included myself as Chair; Judy Laubach and Robin Johnson, Co-chairs for the Day; Sterling Laubach, Site Manager; Britt Reifinger, Raffle Manager; Diane Clauss, Information Specialist; Ed Johnson, Manager of On Site Registration and Walk Stepout; and Fred Stevenson, Treasurer.
In the beginning, we held our meetings at the Sacred Heart Hospital Conference Center Allentown, PA. The hospital generously lent us a conference phone for these early meetings.
Our first tasks were to divide up the work, find a site, and make up a budget and action plan. Judy offered the Moorestown Recreation Center just outside of Bath, PA as a possible site. We quickly accepted! We worked out a budget to include in our application for a PHA seed grant to cover operating expenses until donations came in. We applied in November, and received a very welcome grant of up to $1,000 in December. As we moved forward with our planning, we discovered two things:
- Face-to-face meetings were not working because attendance was too iffy.
- We had become a revolving committee because some of the earlier members left for personal reasons and new ones joined the planning efforts.
Our face-to-face meetings ended by early 2006; we went electronic, communicating by email and telephone. Subsequently, we formed a “Virtual Walk Planning Committee.”
Kristen Wentzel, Community Relations Specialist at Sacred Heart Hospital in Allentown, designed a beautiful flyer with a map to the site on the back. Accredo Health Group made 1,000 copies and sent them to us by Federal Express. Then committee members, support group members, families, “friends and relations,” (ref.: Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh stories by A.A. Milne), and neighbors fanned out through the Lehigh-Poconos (PA) area.
Our missions were several:
- Distribute flyers announcing the 2006 PH Fun Walk.
- Gather donations (cash and in kind).
- Collect raffle items.
- Spread the word about PH.
Our publicity team, Robin and Ed Johnson, and Joan and Fred Stevenson swung into action, writing about pulmonary hypertension, drafting public service announcements (PSAs) about the upcoming PH Fun Walk for a Cure, and getting this information getting out to area media.
Another difficult set of rapids the little boat and its crew encountered was supplying walkers, volunteers, and first responders, i.e., the EMT’s, local police and fire departments with official PHA shirts and caps. At that time, PHA was charging full price for shirts and hats. At $15 a pop, we could not afford 100 of each, although we did purchase a few at list price for prizes and raffle items. So Robin Johnson and Judy Laubach persuaded a local T-shirt designer make some T-shirts in white with a blue Walk Logo. While the T-shirts were not donations, they were considerably less expensive, very well designed, and executed on very short notice. I understand that for future events, PHA has now started providing a limited number of shirts and hats for event volunteers.
We rowed on, continuing to build the boat as we rowed.
Our final face-to-face meeting was on Saturday, May 13, 2006, at the Moorestown Recreation Center. Judy and Sterling Laubach, Joan and Fred Stevenson, Ed Johnson, and Britt Reifinger were on deck, some of us not having seen each other before. Our purpose was to see the lay of the land and make some final decisions. We tweaked here and there, but Sterling and his crew had done a terrific job setting the Recreation Center up for the following Saturday.
We had planned to have a locally catered buffet lunch, but even at a projected 75 people, it would have cost far more than the CurascriptSP donation of up to $350.00. Instead, having often undertaken this kind of project, Sterling and Judy, with other volunteers, rassled up a home grown lunch. Judy and her crew shopped for food and supplies; Sterling and his crew cooked over a huge barbecue pit, which had been built into the Rec. Center by the local Lions Club. Cost of food and supplies $278.48; labor cost $0. It was all done by community and high school volunteers!
W-Day (May 20, 2006) arrived. Cool, but no rain. Lots of people streamed in from as far away as Massachusetts and Virginia. Ninety-eight people registered on site, but probably more came. Ed and Robin Johnson handled registration and on-site donations. They were very busy.
Britt Reifinger and Ed Johnson ran the raffle; she handled the cash box while he called out raffle numbers. Raffle items included many gift cards, several children’s goody basket, a Longenberger lunch basket with protector, tool set, garden set, a Bath & Body Basket, an overnight stay with all the trimmings at Woodloch Pines Resort in northeast Pennsylvania, and many more useful, delectable, and attractive items. On Walk Day, the raffle event brought in over $300.00. The overall take on that day alone was almost $3,000.00.
In appreciation for their contributions of money, services, and labor, we designed a Certification of Appreciation to hand out at the site or mail out to those who were not there.
Yusetty Martinez of Accredo Health Group took the pictures accompanying this story of our maiden voyage.
Everyone who came, including representatives of the Northeast Pennsylvania Lupus Foundation, had such fun! The little boat we were building while rowing arrived safely to its destination bearing a gift of over $4,000 to PHA (Editor’s Note: $4,274 was grossed, to give credit where it is due!). Not bad for a maiden voyage! The members of Virtual Walk Committee are gung-ho to start working on our Second Annual Lehigh-Poconos PH Fun Walk in 2007.
Ed Johnson (email: ejoh2222@aol.com) will chair the planning committee for next near. His step-daughter, Angela Dion, 24, has pulmonary hypertension.
