Race for the Cure Article - Posted Monday 8/10

This article appeared in the Kansas City Star the day after the Race for the Cure!! Our team was mentioned...we won largest community team again this year!! THANK YOU to all who joined us!!

Posted on Sun, Aug. 09, 2009

It's a team effort at the Race for the Cure
By CANDACE BUCKNERThe Kansas City Star

Jeff Limpic sang the national anthem several times before at the Susan G. Komen Kansas City Race for the Cure. But on Sunday morning, the experience was different for Jeff and his wife, Kelly. This time, Jeff wasn’t singing as a nice-guy volunteer who knew only two women — his stepmother and stepmother-in-law — affected by breast cancer. Now, he’s a husband to a survivor.

As he belted out the final note, with many in the crowd of 28,500 standing around Union Station applauding, Kelly ran to her husband with her arms spread open
“It’s just so personal,” Kelly, a 35-year-old resident of Grain Valley, would later say about this year’s experience at the Race for the Cure. “It hit close to home.”
While real-deal runners such as Bret Imgrund, the KU standout who defended his win in the competitive 5K run/walk in 15:21.13, raced to the finish line, the Limpics slowly — and happily — walked in celebration.

She finished her final round of chemotherapy a week ago, and when asked how she’s doing now, Kelly released a sigh that said it all.

“I’m relieved,” she said. “I’m glad that I still can be here.”

Her husband, smiling, interrupted. “We’ll see how the walk goes,” Jeff joked.

Jeff was playing up the dramatics before approaching the starting line over the Main Street Bridge, but this 1-mile walk was nothing compared with what his wife has endured.
Earlier this year, Kelly thought a pulled muscle was the reason behind the nagging pain in her left side. She initially ignored it but finally told Jeff and he suggested she see a doctor. A routine examination and then a mammogram revealed it wasn’t a pulled muscle after all, but that Kelly was in stage 1 of triple-negative breast cancer.

She had surgery in March. Started chemo in April. Lost her hair on Mother’s Day. Now in August, she’s called a survivor.

“There is hope and there is a lot of good people out there,” Jeff said. “It was a blessing how many people came forward to offer help.”

Surrounded by the support of her husband, two children and a host of extended family members, Kelly couldn’t name everyone.

“We’ve got a crew here,” Kelly said.

It would seem that most survivors on Sunday morning brought their crews, too. Team participation — when friends, co-workers and family members join together to walk in celebration or in memory of a loved one — helps the Kansas City Race for the Cure break its own attendance record year after year. With 670 teams among an estimated 17,700 participants, team unity was on display throughout the crowd covered in pink.

A team named “Debra’s Circle of Friends,” captained by Debra Lewis, formed the largest posse of 264 members. Lewis also raised more than $3,950 to throw into the pot of $1.1 million — and counting — this year. Most of the money raised will stay here to provide education, screening and treatment services.

Some showed their unity and support for the cause in different ways.

The 10 Shawnee Mission South girls basketball players lined up on the bridge, the wind blowing their pink capes making them seem more superheroes than cheerleaders. Instead of walking for their coach Ron Millard, who lost his wife, Joan, to breast cancer, the girls volunteered their morning to chant and cheer the participants on their way.

The girls repeated the same four lines like a mantra, punctuating the final one with a loud WOOOOOOO!

Their teenage enthusiasm seemed limitless. Junior Katie Gerlach explained why it was nothing for her teammates to wake up so early, with so much energy for the fight against breast cancer.
Gerlach remembers Joan at every game seated in the front row of the bleachers, and now, like many in the SM South basketball family, feels her absence.

“We know what the survivors went through,” Gerlach said. “We do it for them.”

To reach Candace Buckner, send e-mail to cbuckner@kcstar.com