PEORIA/BRIMFIELD/SPARLAND, Ill. – On Saturday, thousands of runners from the Memphis to Peoria St. Jude Run, as well as more than 30 satellite runs, will converge on the Peoria Civic Center.
More than 2,500 runners in total will gather after running many miles, and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, giving sick kids and families hope.
The message of hope and the mission of St. Jude is what motivates Bill Sellers to run, now participating in his 24th year of traveling down to Tennessee and running the many miles back up to Peoria.
“The dedication to helping and serving people that they’ll never know, and they might not know the outcome of their contribution,” Sellers said. “But ultimately, the promise of Danny Thomas that no child should die in the dawn of life was just made so evident.”
Sellers joined the Memphis to Peoria run years ago, after a co-worker who was already a participant encouraged him to join, because Sellers was a runner. He says there was a realization right away that it would not be the only year he would participate.
Sellers called that first year “eye-opening” because of the travel and the amount of activity that he did, but also the dedication to the mission. Sellers says he never anticipated participating for 24 years, but is grateful for the opportunity to run.
Morgan Jones has been an organizer for the Elmwood/Brimfield to Peoria satellite run for five years, and been a part of it for six years. It was around that time that Jones’ son, Tucker, became a patient himself at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.
Tucker was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at two-and-a-half years old in 2019. Morgan says his treatment involved going to Memphis, spending nine-and-a-half weeks there. The treatment involved two-and-a-half years of intense chemo therapy, followed by tests every six months, along with tests at the affiliate hospital in Peoria.
“Just seeing what they do, you just do not understand how much that hospital does and the people that are in it, until you have to be. And nobody wants that for anybody,” Jones said. “So we don’t want you to know that, but we want to advocate, I want to advocate. That’s why I feel so strongly about the run.”
Morgan says Tucker is officially considered cured as of last year, and, despite some side effects, is thriving as an eight-year-old. She says she can never repay the help received from the hospital and what they’ve done for her family, but the most she can do is to continue to help St. Jude and its mission.
Hannah Folks of Sparland is one of six runners that have participated in the Marshall County to Peoria run for all 15 years it has existed. She had to receive special permission to participate in the first run in 2011, as Folks was only 17 years old at the time.
Folks wanted to run to give back. That’s because a year prior, she was a patient herself, battling Hodgkin’s Lymphoma while a student at Midland High School in Varna, where she was a cheerleader and a member of the golf team.
“That was the first thing was ‘How do I give back to all of what St. Jude has done for myself and my family?’” Folks said. “So it was a no-brainer to get involved and I’ve been hooked ever since.”
Folks says there were challenges battling Hodgkin’s Lymphoma as a teenager. She says not many think they’ll go through high school losing all their hair, as one example. But Folks says the only way forward was to push through, noting that the experience has given her more rewarding things later on in her life.
Folks says the most important part of the run for her each year is not how far each person can run, but how much they can raise for the kids. The Marshall County run has a goal of $200,000, with Folks setting a personal goal of $7,000.
Folks says the run has a family feel because a lot of the participants knew each other growing up, with numerous familiar faces each year. She adds that one of her favorite parts of the run is seeing people turn out to support the run at the foot of the bridge in Lacon as they run through.
Once the runs are complete, the runners will gather at the Civic Center and take part in the St. Jude telethon on WEEK-TV Saturday night. Sellers says there will be many feelings in that moment.
“It’s a feeling of relief, it’s a feeling of accomplishment,” Sellers said. “And when you do something that requires a lot of individual hours of running and practice, and then you know that countless others are doing the same thing, wow.”
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