Two events this weekend have disparaging roots, but both certainly should have generous participation.
Iola’s annual Relay for Life begins at 6 o’clock Friday evening and concludes a smidgen after daybreak Saturday. During the night scores of folks intent on raising money to help in the fight against cancer will mosey along sidewalks around the courthouse square.
While the aim is to attract financial support, the Relay also means to draw attention to cancer and the heartache it creates — for those who suffer physically from the disease and legions of others who suffer emotionally because loved ones have been stricken.
The American Cancer Society is a premier organization trying to bring an end to the dreaded disease. Money raised this weekend will go to research, which has been exceedingly successful but still has far to go.
Good ways to cheer on Relay walkers are twofold: Donate through them and stop by Iola’s downtown square to give them a heart-felt pat on the back.
IN HUMBOLDT — mostly Saturday and Sunday afternoon, with a dance leading in on Friday night — a Confederate raid that left many buildings in the town burned in 1861 and other components of the Civil War will be recalled. The celebration that has been going on at various intervals since 1994 — more recently every three years — gives anyone with cursory about the past a sterling learning opportunity.
The Civil War often has been called a scourge of epic proportions. For years the death toll has been estimated at 620,000, about 360,000 Union troops, 260,000 Confederate. More recently technological examination of records have put battlefield deaths as high as 850,000.
Those are mind-numbing numbers, and exceed by large margins the number of Americans who died in the two world wars and any other conflict with which the nation has been associated.
Nothing can be done about wars past, but much can be done about cancer, heart disease and other things terminal, including suicide which has an alarming presence among the young.
Taking in either event may be steeped in grim reminders, but they also are opportunities to celebrate life, through those walking in the Relay, and by recognizing those who died from the folly of war.
— Bob Johnson
Weekend events bring life, despite somber origins
