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Strawberries in March, Fighting Cancer in April: A Story From the 2011 Plant City Relay For Life
Florida Strawberry Festival workers joined the 2011 Plant City Relay For Life at Plant City High. The April 8-9 event was the last of eight Relays organized by the Brandon-based American Cancer Society Southeast Hillsborough Unit.
The Florida Strawberry Festival in March finished its 76th year and 11-day run but that didn’t deter the tired festival employees from making the most of another major fundraiser in Plant City.
This time, the stakes were much higher, the cause even more profound, as noted by the workers who manned the Florida Strawberry Festival booth at the 2011 Plant City Relay For Life.
The goal, simple: To end cancer, for good.
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“One of our best employees, our president, Mike Sparkman, has just beaten cancer and everyone of us here knows someone who has been affected by cancer,” Paul Davis said.
“This is my daughter, [Amber], who lost both grandparents on her father’s side to cancer,” said Sunny Smith, herself a cervical cancer survivor.
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With them for a photograph were festival workers Judy Shepherd and Becky Martin, whose both husbands had beaten the dreaded disease, too.
“A month ago today I had my last treatment,” Sunny Smith said April 8, the first day of the overnight fundraiser at Plant City High School.
The Relay “is very moving,” she added. “It brings people together, it brings strangers together.”
Cancer, she noted, is a life-changer.
“I do [believe that],” she said. “It makes you appreciate things a lot more.”
Sunny Smith decided against wearing the deep purple T-shirt.
“I did not want to wear a survivor T-shirt,” she said. “My cancer wasn’t as severe as other people’s. I think those people had to fight harder. They’re the survivors.”
But not so in the minds of Relay organizers. Anyone who is diagnosed with the disease, or who has fought it and is now cancer free, is deemed special enough to wear the T-shirt, no matter the length of the battle.
Diagnosed in the last week of November, Sunny Smith ended her treatments March 9, in the midst of the Florida Strawberry Festival, which ran from March 3-13.
As for her prognosis moving forward, “We’re looking good,” Smith said.
To which one could add, even better in a purple T-shirt.
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