May 31, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Run to end after 20 years of good deeds
by JENNIFER KATZ

This year’s Run beneficiary, Tracey Snyder.

After raising upwards of $1 million for more than a dozen families with a special needs child, Run for the Hill of It organizers decided that this would be the run’s last year.

When runners line up on Saturday, July 28 for the 5-mile run and 1-mile walk to raise money for this year’s beneficiary Tracey Snyder, a 14-year-old girl suffering from cardiovascular disease, it will be the end of the line for the area’s well-known benefit, said one of the event’s founders, Anne McNally.

“Twenty years ago, we thought we were doing it for one year for multiple sclerosis,” McNally said of the annual run and dinner dance fundraiser. “So many people should be proud of what they’ve done.”

That first run included 75 runners and raised about $3,000 for the disease. It was not until the following year, that the same group would reconvene the event in hopes of raising $10,000 for a 13-year-old one of the organizers met when his nephew was at Children’s Hospital.

Erik Engwall was a cystic fibrosis patient who spent most of his short life in the hospital. For many of the run’s beneficiaries, the event did more than provide much needed financial assistance, it also gave them the chance to celebrate in a way many of them never had.

“Many of these kids don’t get to go to the prom or things like that that other children get to do,” McNally said. “For Erik the dinner dance was a really big deal. He got to play with the band.”

Engwall died less than a year after the dance.

The group formed Friends of Erik in his honor and began to produce the two annual events, usually held in July and October, to benefit a sick child. In the first 11 years, they raised a half-million dollars. After incorporating as a nonprofit and operating under the Chestnut Hill Rotary Club, the group raised another half-million dollars over the next four to five years.

People were more comfortable giving money to a nonprofit, McNally said. And with the increase in monetary donations, the number of runners jumped from under 100 to more than 800 last year.

Beth Breault, event co-chair for the last 10 years, said the hope is to hand off the run as a fundraiser to another charitable organization with a similar mission.

“You need new creative energy once in a while,” she said. “The current make-up has run its course and no one internally had the time nor the experience to keep it going.”

Both McNally and Breault said that while the work, which is all voluntary, of putting the run on every year is fulfilling, the time commitment is overwhelming.

“When we started we were all young and single,” McNally said. “Now we are all married and have children.”

Breault estimated that she spends more than 200 hours a year on the run.

“It takes a whole lot of energy,” she said.

But if the last 20 years have benefited sick children and their families, they have also been a tremendous boon to the run’s founders.

“I realize how lucky I am,” McNally said. “While these families have great lives, their full time job is their sick child. They forget what it’s like to go out to dinner and not get a phone call.”

The Snyder family in Pitman, N.J., is the latest of the run’s beneficiaries to know all too well the challenges of raising a child with a chronic and life-threatening illness. Tracey was born with four different heart diseases known as William’s syndrome. She has undergone open-heart surgery, battled developmental delays and learning disabilities and has severe scoliosis.

Tracey’s father, Frank, started a challenger baseball league for children with special needs six years ago. The league now boasts more than 40 kids, ages 5 to 18, and plays every Sunday in the spring and early summer.

The beauty of the run, McNally said, is that people can contribute in many different ways.

“You can run, you can write a check, you can volunteer,” she said. “A lot of times, when you have a friend with a sick child, it’s awkward and you don’t know what to do. The run gives people the opportunity to get involved.”

McNally said her group is going to look for an organization to take over the run and will offer help to the new organization, but even if the run does not get picked up she has no regrets.

“If someone doesn’t pick it up, we are just going to be happy and proud of what we’ve done,” she said.

To participate in the 20th annual Run for the Hill of It visit www.runforthehillofit.org.

Contact staff writer Jennifer Katz at 215-248-8804 or jenn@chestnuthilllocal.com.