Raise The Flag

No one can take part in a Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure 60-mile walk without being forever touched by the incredible opening and closing ceremonies. The festivities are practically religious in nature; people weep openly in memory of loved ones lost and in honor of those who are still fighting the good fight against the cancer that threatens to rob them of everything they've got and everything they'll ever have.

There's pomp, there's circumstance, there's a procession of flagbearers, there's music, there's laughter and singing, and there's solemnity that you might never expect to find outside of a state funeral. You might almost think that you're at the Olympic Games, so great is the pageantry and so powerful are the emotions.

When you think of the closing ceremonies, you tend to remember, especially, three things:

• Thousands of people, walkers and crew alike, holding a single shoe over their heads as the survivors enter at the end of the ceremony, all wearing identical pink victory t-shirts,
• the survivors themselves, forming a circle on an elevated stage in the very center of the crowd, joining hands and raising their arms together as a triumphal banner is raised heralding the coming of a world without breast cancer,
• and ... the flags.

The 3-Day is nothing without its flags. Flags reminding us that a lifetime should be full of incredible moments: graduations, reunions, dreams, victories, anniversaries, discoveries, achievements, birthdays, weddings, you name it. Flags reminding us of the irreplaceable people for whom we're walking: my wife, my husband, my aunt, my sister, my daughter, my grandmother, my partner, ...myself. And in the center ring, the survivors with their flags, reminding us all of the values that will see us through the fight: optimism, commitment, healing, hope, love, belief, patience, ... courage.

The flags are present at opening: the flagbearers lurk behind the stage as the ceremony gets underway, then come up onto the stage in front of thousands of walkers and crew and spectators and solemnly proceed across it, down the steps, and up chutes at the side of the crowd to stand mutely reminding us why we walk. The survivors appear at the back of the crowd and file forward to the center ring, place their flags in holders, then raise their joined hands high.

The flags are present at closing: the "lifetime" flags are there as the walkers and crew enter the site... and once everyone is present, the "honor" flagbearers come onstage, many with the person or people for whom they're walking.

The woman carrying the "My Daughter" steps forward with her 22-year-old daughter, already diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. The woman carrying "My Grandmother" steps forward with her grandmother at her side, a seventeen-year survivor. And the man carrying "My Wife" steps forward ... alone. But not truly alone -- his love for his wife and his memories of their time together will be with him always.

And then the survivors come in again, filing in in their pink long-sleeved Victory shirts, coming, flags in hand to the stage in the center ring ... and off come thousands and thousands of single shoes, held high. "We walk for you". It doesn't need to be said out loud. We know.

You'll even see the flags out on the 60-mile route. The flags used at opening and closing ceremonies are far too large to carry for sixty miles (although, to be fair, the flags used in 2010 were much lighter than the behemoths used in 2009 and earlier years), but the message they convey ought to be remembered for sixty miles, and for sixty times sixty miles, and for many miles beyond that. Thus, smaller, much lighter and more portable versions of the flags are carried on the route by various individuals, given them as they step out on the route in the dawn's early light on the first day. No one has to carry one of the small flags for all sixty miles; it's expected that they be handed off from walker to walker throughout the day. But once in a while, you get a case where someone just doesn't want to let go -- and you get folks like the guy I met at one 3-Day who asked for, and got, the "My Wife" flag at the start of Day 1 and never put it down until he had walked all sixty miles and reached the finish line at the end of Day 3. (You want to find a cure for breast cancer? It takes commitment. Commitment, we got!)

I love the 3-Day flags. Seriously.

For me it's one of the best parts of the whole event -- the panoply of color and fabric, the ritual and the emotion. I've been involved in four 3-Days in three years (so far) and have been a flagbearer in three of them.

I wound up almost by accident carrying a flag in my very first 3-Day in 2008; someone selected as a flagbearer for the Washington, DC 3-Day couldn't make it, and at the last minute, a walker who remembered me from the message boards on the 3-Day website called me while I was doing my final packing for the event and said "Hey, you wanna carry a flag?" That's how, to my surprise, I found myself in an immense parking lot at the Potomac Mills Outlet Mall in Woodbridge, Virginia 24 hours later, holding an immense pink and white flag that said "Anniversaries" and going through flagbearer practice... and that's how I came to be filing onstage in the light of dawn to stand next to spokeswoman Jenne' Fromm onstage in front of thousands of 3-Day walkers.

During the following three days, I rarely passed up a chance to carry one of the small portable flags, even if it wasn't one that I personally had a connection to. If I saw one cast down on a table at a pit stop, I'd pick it up and hold it proudly overhead for the next three miles, looking for someone who would be glad to bear it, whether it read "My Partner" or simply "Love". It got to be kind of a running joke with my team -- every time they saw me hand one away, they'd think "Okay, that's that" and then they'd look around and there I'd be with another.

At closing, there we were, walking in, we thousands and thousands of walkers, lined up with our teams, all wearing the white 3-Day shirts we'd been given at the finish line... and suddenly there was a 3-Day staff member holding the giant "Generations" flag I'd last seen at opening out to me and saying "Would you carry this into closing?" Startled, I took it and said "Sure!" My teammate Sandy, walking in slightly ahead of me, burst out laughing when she turned and saw me with one final flag. It served as the perfect bookend to a flag-laden weekend.

In 2009 I was involved in two 3-Day events, one as crew and one as a walker.

There was no question of my bearing a flag in the 2009 Boston 3-Day in July of that year -- for one, crew members are rarely asked to carry flags, and for another, at the moment opening ceremonies were getting underway I was sitting in a passenger van sunk up to its axles in mud along with the other members of the "Pit Stop 5" crew team. We'd been off at a host hotel loading baggage into shuttle buses to get people over to opening and were late to opening anyway, and by the time we got there, and parked, things were already underway. That's when we realized that the solid-looking patch of grass we'd parked in was a slimy morass of mud... or perhaps 'quicksand' would have been a better description. Anyway, I never saw opening that year. (I'm just pleased we finally worked the van out of the mud and managed to get our pit stop open on schedule.)

But I did carry a flag in the Philadelphia 3-Day in October of 2009. A few months before the walk, I contacted the field coordinator for the walk and asked if there was any chance my wife, a first-time walker, might get to carry a flag, just as I had the previous year. I was startled to be asked back, "Sure! And would you like to as well? You and she can carry the 'My Wife' and 'My Husband' flags." "Wow," I thought.

Unfortunately, we did not get to carry them in opening ceremonies... because as anyone who was there in Philly in 2009 can tell you, two nor'easter storms hit the city on the same weekend and forced cancellation of the first two days of the 3-Day. It was a frustrated and bedraggled, but ultimately happy bunch of women and men who did a one-day 3-Day, walking about fifteen miles through rainy, chilly streets. There was no opening ceremony other than a "GO GO GO 3-DAY WALKERS" as we charged out of the starting blocks on the third day, covered in more raingear than I think I've ever seen in one place.

Closing took place like always, but to this day I don't know if anyone had on their long-sleeved "victory" shirts because were all swaddled up in cold-weather gear like Arctic explorers. But we had a blast -- me onstage with "My Wife", my wife Carole holding my hand and in her free hand holding "My Husband", and next to us, our friend Sandy, holding "My Partner". And cold weather or no, the shoes still came off when the survivors marched in.

This year my wife and I were geared up and ready to crew Boston for the second time when we got this email (well, okay, we were actually on vacation in Paris a week before the 3-Day when it came in, if you must know, which made it all seem a little more surreal) from our friend Meredith Cleasby, field coordinator for the Boston 3-Day, asking if we'd both like to carry flags in opening ceremonies in Boston. "But we're crew," we said to each other. "Why is she asking us to carry flags? Flags are for walkers." But we know the first rule of the 3-Day: Never Say 'No' To Anything; You Don't Cure Cancer By Saying 'No'.

And so we said "Sure!" and that's how we wound up as the first people ever to carry the new "I" flags -- one flag reading "Incredible" brought out before all the incredible "Lifetime moment" flags, and one flag reading "Irreplaceable", brought out before all the flags reminding us of the irreplaceable individuals that we walk on behalf of. But you'll pardon us if, I hope, if we also feel that we were carrying those flags as crew in honor of the incredible and absolutely irreplaceable 3-Day crew who make every 3-Day possible.

So yes, I love the 3-Day flags. I've carried Lifetime flags ("Anniversaries" and "Generations"). I've carried an Honor flag ("My Wife"). I've even been an "I" flagbearer, carrying the "Irreplaceable" flag. And I salute the survivors, carrying their flags to the center ring, flags of love and hope and optimism and courage. But the flag I'm proudest to see raised is that flag that one survivor raises at the very end, the flag reminding us what we're all walking for.

As the flag says, we walk for "A World Without Breast Cancer." That's a flag that everyone, regardless of nationality, can salute.

Raise The Flag

No one can take part in a Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure 60-mile walk without being forever touched by the incredible opening and closing ceremonies. The festivities are practically religious in nature; people weep openly in memory of loved ones lost and in honor of those who are still fighting the good fight against the cancer that threatens to rob them of everything they've got and everything they'll ever have.

There's pomp, there's circumstance, there's a procession of flagbearers, there's music, there's laughter and singing, and there's solemnity that you might never expect to find outside of a state funeral. You might almost think that you're at the Olympic Games, so great is the pageantry and so powerful are the emotions.

When you think of the closing ceremonies, you tend to remember, especially, three things:

• Thousands of people, walkers and crew alike, holding a single shoe over their heads as the survivors enter at the end of the ceremony, all wearing identical pink victory t-shirts,
• the survivors themselves, forming a circle on an elevated stage in the very center of the crowd, joining hands and raising their arms together as a triumphal banner is raised heralding the coming of a world without breast cancer,
• and ... the flags.

The 3-Day is nothing without its flags. Flags reminding us that a lifetime should be full of incredible moments: graduations, reunions, dreams, victories, anniversaries, discoveries, achievements, birthdays, weddings, you name it. Flags reminding us of the irreplaceable people for whom we're walking: my wife, my husband, my aunt, my sister, my daughter, my grandmother, my partner, ...myself. And in the center ring, the survivors with their flags, reminding us all of the values that will see us through the fight: optimism, commitment, healing, hope, love, belief, patience, ... courage.

The flags are present at opening: the flagbearers lurk behind the stage as the ceremony gets underway, then come up onto the stage in front of thousands of walkers and crew and spectators and solemnly proceed across it, down the steps, and up chutes at the side of the crowd to stand mutely reminding us why we walk. The survivors appear at the back of the crowd and file forward to the center ring, place their flags in holders, then raise their joined hands high.

The flags are present at closing: the "lifetime" flags are there as the walkers and crew enter the site... and once everyone is present, the "honor" flagbearers come onstage, many with the person or people for whom they're walking.

The woman carrying the "My Daughter" steps forward with her 22-year-old daughter, already diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. The woman carrying "My Grandmother" steps forward with her grandmother at her side, a seventeen-year survivor. And the man carrying "My Wife" steps forward ... alone. But not truly alone -- his love for his wife and his memories of their time together will be with him always.

And then the survivors come in again, filing in in their pink long-sleeved Victory shirts, coming, flags in hand to the stage in the center ring ... and off come thousands and thousands of single shoes, held high. "We walk for you". It doesn't need to be said out loud. We know.

You'll even see the flags out on the 60-mile route. The flags used at opening and closing ceremonies are far too large to carry for sixty miles (although, to be fair, the flags used in 2010 were much lighter than the behemoths used in 2009 and earlier years), but the message they convey ought to be remembered for sixty miles, and for sixty times sixty miles, and for many miles beyond that. Thus, smaller, much lighter and more portable versions of the flags are carried on the route by various individuals, given them as they step out on the route in the dawn's early light on the first day. No one has to carry one of the small flags for all sixty miles; it's expected that they be handed off from walker to walker throughout the day. But once in a while, you get a case where someone just doesn't want to let go -- and you get folks like the guy I met at one 3-Day who asked for, and got, the "My Wife" flag at the start of Day 1 and never put it down until he had walked all sixty miles and reached the finish line at the end of Day 3. (You want to find a cure for breast cancer? It takes commitment. Commitment, we got!)

I love the 3-Day flags. Seriously.

For me it's one of the best parts of the whole event -- the panoply of color and fabric, the ritual and the emotion. I've been involved in four 3-Days in three years (so far) and have been a flagbearer in three of them.

I wound up almost by accident carrying a flag in my very first 3-Day in 2008; someone selected as a flagbearer for the Washington, DC 3-Day couldn't make it, and at the last minute, a walker who remembered me from the message boards on the 3-Day website called me while I was doing my final packing for the event and said "Hey, you wanna carry a flag?" That's how, to my surprise, I found myself in an immense parking lot at the Potomac Mills Outlet Mall in Woodbridge, Virginia 24 hours later, holding an immense pink and white flag that said "Anniversaries" and going through flagbearer practice... and that's how I came to be filing onstage in the light of dawn to stand next to spokeswoman Jenne' Fromm onstage in front of thousands of 3-Day walkers.

During the following three days, I rarely passed up a chance to carry one of the small portable flags, even if it wasn't one that I personally had a connection to. If I saw one cast down on a table at a pit stop, I'd pick it up and hold it proudly overhead for the next three miles, looking for someone who would be glad to bear it, whether it read "My Partner" or simply "Love". It got to be kind of a running joke with my team -- every time they saw me hand one away, they'd think "Okay, that's that" and then they'd look around and there I'd be with another.

At closing, there we were, walking in, we thousands and thousands of walkers, lined up with our teams, all wearing the white 3-Day shirts we'd been given at the finish line... and suddenly there was a 3-Day staff member holding the giant "Generations" flag I'd last seen at opening out to me and saying "Would you carry this into closing?" Startled, I took it and said "Sure!" My teammate Sandy, walking in slightly ahead of me, burst out laughing when she turned and saw me with one final flag. It served as the perfect bookend to a flag-laden weekend.

In 2009 I was involved in two 3-Day events, one as crew and one as a walker.

There was no question of my bearing a flag in the 2009 Boston 3-Day in July of that year -- for one, crew members are rarely asked to carry flags, and for another, at the moment opening ceremonies were getting underway I was sitting in a passenger van sunk up to its axles in mud along with the other members of the "Pit Stop 5" crew team. We'd been off at a host hotel loading baggage into shuttle buses to get people over to opening and were late to opening anyway, and by the time we got there, and parked, things were already underway. That's when we realized that the solid-looking patch of grass we'd parked in was a slimy morass of mud... or perhaps 'quicksand' would have been a better description. Anyway, I never saw opening that year. (I'm just pleased we finally worked the van out of the mud and managed to get our pit stop open on schedule.)

But I did carry a flag in the Philadelphia 3-Day in October of 2009. A few months before the walk, I contacted the field coordinator for the walk and asked if there was any chance my wife, a first-time walker, might get to carry a flag, just as I had the previous year. I was startled to be asked back, "Sure! And would you like to as well? You and she can carry the 'My Wife' and 'My Husband' flags." "Wow," I thought.

Unfortunately, we did not get to carry them in opening ceremonies... because as anyone who was there in Philly in 2009 can tell you, two nor'easter storms hit the city on the same weekend and forced cancellation of the first two days of the 3-Day. It was a frustrated and bedraggled, but ultimately happy bunch of women and men who did a one-day 3-Day, walking about fifteen miles through rainy, chilly streets. There was no opening ceremony other than a "GO GO GO 3-DAY WALKERS" as we charged out of the starting blocks on the third day, covered in more raingear than I think I've ever seen in one place.

Closing took place like always, but to this day I don't know if anyone had on their long-sleeved "victory" shirts because were all swaddled up in cold-weather gear like Arctic explorers. But we had a blast -- me onstage with "My Wife", my wife Carole holding my hand and in her free hand holding "My Husband", and next to us, our friend Sandy, holding "My Partner". And cold weather or no, the shoes still came off when the survivors marched in.

This year my wife and I were geared up and ready to crew Boston for the second time when we got this email (well, okay, we were actually on vacation in Paris a week before the 3-Day when it came in, if you must know, which made it all seem a little more surreal) from our friend Meredith Cleasby, field coordinator for the Boston 3-Day, asking if we'd both like to carry flags in opening ceremonies in Boston. "But we're crew," we said to each other. "Why is she asking us to carry flags? Flags are for walkers." But we know the first rule of the 3-Day: Never Say 'No' To Anything; You Don't Cure Cancer By Saying 'No'.

And so we said "Sure!" and that's how we wound up as the first people ever to carry the new "I" flags -- one flag reading "Incredible" brought out before all the incredible "Lifetime moment" flags, and one flag reading "Irreplaceable", brought out before all the flags reminding us of the irreplaceable individuals that we walk on behalf of. But you'll pardon us if, I hope, if we also feel that we were carrying those flags as crew in honor of the incredible and absolutely irreplaceable 3-Day crew who make every 3-Day possible.

So yes, I love the 3-Day flags. I've carried Lifetime flags ("Anniversaries" and "Generations"). I've carried an Honor flag ("My Wife"). I've even been an "I" flagbearer, carrying the "Irreplaceable" flag. And I salute the survivors, carrying their flags to the center ring, flags of love and hope and optimism and courage. But the flag I'm proudest to see raised is that flag that one survivor raises at the very end, the flag reminding us what we're all walking for.

As the flag says, we walk for "A World Without Breast Cancer." That's a flag that everyone, regardless of nationality, can salute.