Memories, Cause Motivate Plant City Relay For Life Participants

Another year, another mega-showing for the Relay For Life of Plant City, which makes Barbara Franques, whose husband died from cancer, a very happy woman.

A long-time employee of the Hillsborough County School District, from which she retired as an area director, Franques has long been a key supporter and advocate for the Plant City Relay, one of the largest in the state.

Last year’s event topped $270,000 and again, this year, the Plant City Relay For Life, April 20-21 at Plant City High School, was expected to top that number as well.

That’s a lot of dollars to combat cancer.

“What’s so amazing is the commitment of the groups that contribute to our cause,” Franques said, noting not only the seven Relay For Life events in Southeastern Hillsborough County but also the world.

As a Plant City organizer put it, in announcing the luminaria lap at 9 p.m., “This is the largest non-profit fundraising event in the world.”

Joan Carr for years was a staunch Relay For Life supporter, up to the time she lost her life to colon cancer.

“She had a big interest in Relay For Life,” said Carr’s niece, Kathy Spears. “She talked about it before she died. She wanted us to do this,” to attend the event in Plant City.

At the April 20 overnight fundraiser in memory of Carr, a son, husband, sister, great-great grandniece, two brothers, seven nieces and five nephews set up a booth, serving a barbeque meal.

“She was something else and it was hard to watch her go,” Sharron Gould said about her sister, Carr.

The grief is never-ending, she said, which requires a mechanism for coping.

How do you deal with the death of a loved one?

“Pray,” she said. “Think about the good times and try to push the bad in the back. I think of something I want to say to her and I’ve picked up the phone to call her and remember I can’t anymore. I cry, and then I’m okay, ‘till the next time.”

Gould said she sometimes finds herself wanting to call as well her mother, who died from pancreatic cancer in 1997.

“I want to ask her something and I remember her phone number,” Gould said. “It’s still hard at times. So, I get a picture and look at her and remember her, how she was before she died.”

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2012 RELAY FOR LIFE COVERAGE:

•  (2011 coverage)

(For more coverage from the 2011 Relay For Life season, click here.)

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