Relayers: It’s your month

By ROBERT LINNEHAN

Mayor Randy Brown honored the members of the Marlton chapter of Relay for Life earlier this week, bestowing upon them a proclamation for their tireless efforts to raise funding for cancer research.

Brown declared that May would be known as “Relay for Life month” within the township.

It’s an important issue to me, Brown said, as his father was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and succumbed to the cancer in December 2000. He died 19 months after being diagnosed with the disease.

The 2011 Marlton Relay for Life event will be held at Cherokee High School from Saturday June 4 to Sunday, June 5. Register online by visiting www.relayforlife.org/marltonnj.

The American Cancer Society Relay For Life is an event that gives everyone in communities across the globe a chance to celebrate the lives of people who have battled cancer, remember loved ones lost, and fight back against the disease. At Relay, teams of people camp out at a local high school, park, or fairground and take turns walking or running around a track or path. Each team is asked to have a representative on the track at all times during the event. Relays are overnight events up to 24 hours in length.

Al Lutner of the local Marlton chapter said 48,100 new cases of cancer were diagnosed in 2010. There were almost 2,500 new cases diagnosed in Burlington County alone.