Hundreds of people showed up to Evans Towne Center Park for the annual CSRA Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Light the Night event.
The event is a fundraiser to show support and bring awareness to not just blood cancer, but all types of cancer, said Onnie Sanford, campaign development manager for Light the Night.
“We don’t discriminate here,” Sanford said about the support offered for different types of cancer. “Red lanterns are held by people who are here to support, white lanterns are held by survivors and gold lanterns are held by anybody that’s lost somebody to cancer. So, we really just bring light to the darkness of cancer, that’s our tag line and we take a very dark thing and we celebrate it. We celebrate our survivors; we show support of people that have lost loved ones and just kind of all come together and have fun.”
The 2023 Honored Hero was Mary Catherine Ramos, an acute myeloid leukemia survivor. She spoke of all she had to go through during her cancer battle and has been in remission for five years. She added that the awareness being brought to blood cancers with the event changes lives.
“I directly benefited from the research and financial assistance that your donations support through Light the Night,” Ramos said. “So, it’s fair when I say I wouldn’t be standing here today without each and every one of you raising awareness and funds for research, financial support and education.”
As for what Ramos hopes people take away from the event, it’s that people need to be relentless in the fight against blood cancer because the cancer is also relentless.
“I didn’t give up in my battle, so please don’t stop in yours against blood cancers,” Ramos said. “My charge to you is to keep up this fight. Let’s create a world where the darkness of AML and other blood cancers is dimmed. A world where a diagnosis of leukemia or lymphoma is not filled with fear, but with answers and hope so that others can join me in my survivorship.”
Carla Hudson was at the event as not only a breast cancer survivor, but someone currently battling lymphoma after a recent diagnosis. She said it was nice to see everybody come out in support of those with cancer and cancer survivors. She added that things have been good so far regarding the lymphoma diagnosis and her symptoms are good currently.
Hudson’s daughter, Natalie Armstrong said they’ve been luck so far with her moms recent diagnosis because she hasn’t had to have treatments yet. She added that it was rough seeing her mom deal with the breast cancer diagnosis nearly 10 years ago.
“But I will say because of her original cancer diagnosis, she was able to find out she had a breast cancer gene, which last year I found out I had the gene,” Armstrong said. “At 26 years old I went under a double mastectomy to make sure that my risk is lower. So now I have a 3% risk, where the everyday regular woman has about a 12% risk.”
Also celebrated during the event were the top fundraisers, top communities and school teams and top corporate teams. For more information, visit https://www.lightthenight.org/events/csra.
Stephanie Hill is the managing editor and covers Columbia County government for The Augusta Press. Reach her at stephanie@theaugustapress.com.
