Why Robin’s Raiders Relay
We are Robin’s Raiders and we Relay for my high school friend Robin. The year she died from liver cancer, I decided to form a team to honor her memory. To say she was a character would put it too mildly. She was fearless and loyal and loved deeply and without compromise. In no particular order, a few memories:
In high school, Robin was not happy with her hair so she dyed it, then bleached it, dyed it another color, then permed it. When it all fell out, she rocked hats and short hair until it grew back. She would try anything!
While living in an apartment with old, nasty carpeting that the landlord wasn’t going to replace until they moved out, she decided to paint the carpet. I have it on good authority that carpet soaks up a lot of paint and dries harder than you would like.
While teaching math at a middle school, she kept a photo of herself at age 14 to remind her of how she felt when she was her students’ age.
After having part of a leg amputated and being fitted for her initial prosthetic, she was already planning on making it into a lamp (like in Christmas Story) once she got her permanent leg.
She was in the hospital and pretty sick when our 30 year high school class reunion rolled around. A friend was able to take her to the reunion, but she had a curfew. Of course she missed the curfew and she had to sneak back into the hospital with the help of her partner in crime. To be fair, I don’t think she’d have had it any other way!
Robin is just one person, but she is missed by so many. Every team has at least one person that is missed or would be missed were not surviving. Every person has memories or stories that have been changed because of cancer. Robin’s Raiders Relays for everyone’s stories. We want to remember those in our past who are gone, those with us today who are fighting the fight, and those who we hope will have a future free of this disease.