Archive: Around Town

With the Relay for Life set for July 14 and 15 local teams can be found around town raising money for the event.  Last Saturday the AES Cayuga team was selling barbecued chicken at the Town ball fields to raise money for their team.  "Our plant's been involved in it since '99, since AES took over the plant," says team leader Dan Hill, who will head a team of about 30 walkers in this year's event.

This is Hill's third or fourth year as team leader.  His team has been conducting fund raisers for some time in preparation for the event.  "We're doing a couple of other things this year," he says.  "We're doing a 50/50 raffle every week for about six weeks before the relay.  We get good participation at the plant for that.  We had an outage this year, so we had a lot of contractors at the plant.  We put together lunches and asked that they participate in the raffles there as well.  That was a surprisingly good fund raiser for us."

Relay For Life is an overnight event that celebrates cancer survivors and raises money for the American Cancer Society's research and programs.  The event is held all over the country, and has been conducted in Tompkins County for eleven years.  Normally held on the track at Ithaca High School, it was moved to the Lansing High School track this year because of repairs being made to the Ithaca facility.

To add to the excitement the national Cancer Society is sending a film team to the Lansing event next month.  The materials will be used in promotional materials the society uses for its national campaign.  "I think this is a great opportunity to capture the spirit of Relays in the Eastern Division and showcase them on a national level," said Karen Becker, National Communications Director, American Cancer Society.


Hill says the chicken barbecue is the team's biggest fund raiser.  They prepared 400 chicken halves, which they began selling around 9:30 Saturday morning.  With the Lyle Crandall Memorial Youth Baseball Tournament going on all weekend, the team had plenty of customers.  Hill says he and his team are looking forward to having the event in Lansing this year.  "It's kind of nice to have it right in our back yard," he says.  "It's local.  A lot of these people are from Lansing.  It's nice being right in the community."

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