ShawneeDispatch.com

There was an all-night party at the David Jaynes Field at Bonner Springs High School on Friday night. OK, maybe not a party, but it looked and sounded at moments like one, though its main purpose was practical and charitable.

The eighth annual Kaw Valley Relay For Life, a benefit event for the American Cancer Society, attracted 38 teams and raised a record $119,316.

There were fun and games for the adults as well as children as the event went on, including a DJ from Mix 93.3, and inflated romper rooms for children to jump around in. Many teams had their own booths, offering items or services in exchange for donations.

The Pink Zebras Shopping For a Cure Team offered relay attendees the chance to fashion unique footwear with varicolored strips of felt to tie and weave around ordinary flip-flops.

Deanna Clouse, the team's captain, said the relay was a good time.

"It's not hard; we enjoy walking and talking," she said, adding that team members rested "whenever we felt like it."

Charlie's Angels was a team composed of members of five families who attend Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Shawnee. Lisa Donart, the team's captain, said the name was a tribute to Charlie Swedo, a who had participated in previous Relays and died of cancer about a month ago.

"I hope someday the money we raise will find a cure," Donart said. "Too many people don't win the battle."

In addition to raising money to find a cure for cancer -- each team and each individual raises money by soliciting from people and businesses -- the event serves less quantifiable ends.

Iit's surprising how emotional it is," Jeff Harrington, a survivor of dermatofibrotosis, said while walking the track. "You get a lot of strength from people here."

Harrington said that when he first was diagnosed with cancer, one of his friends revealed that he'd had cancer.

"That changed everything," Harrington said. "I've been a survivor so long I hope I give some (strength) to others."

If Harrington's story is any indication, Friday night's event must have changed the outlooks of many people, as the event kicked off with a walk around the track of about a hundred cancer survivors, all wearing purple and white T-shirts bearing the relay's logo and its sponsors on the back.

The crowd in the bleachers cheered the survivors as they walked by, led by three people carrying a banner that read "I AM A SURVIVOR!"

Soon the relay itself started, with most members of most teams apparently taking part in at least the first lap, to the strains of the Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited."

There is no athletic competition involved in the relay, but each team was to keep a member on the track throughout the night.

The highlight of the night for many, if not most, of the Relay participants is the Luminaria Ceremony, in which several hundred small candles inside paper bags that are decorated with the names and pictures of cancer victims lining the inside of the track are lighted, and the field lights turned off.

On the east-facing bleachers several more candle bags were lighted, spelling the word "hope."

At the beginning of the ceremony the Rev. Mick Mulvaney of Corpus Christi Catholic Church gave a long sermon, leading the crowd into the Lord's Prayer, before Linda Long, co-chair of this year's relay and a recent cancer survivor herself, spoke.

Long described the difficulties she faced when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer. She compared her ordeal to the trip Monarch butterflies make from Maine to Mexico each year, and said she owed her life to having a mammogram each year, starting early enough that her doctor had a baseline to compare later ones to.

"Mammograms save lives," Long said.

Later, the list of all the names to whom luminaries were dedicated was read.

Next came a fireworks display by Pro Fireworks Unlimited.

From 11:30 to 5:30 walkers and non-walkers helped keep each other going with assorted amusements.

At 6:55 a.m. Saturday, the final lap was begun before everyone packed up and went home.