Survivors Celebrate and Stroll

Nearly 3,500 cancer survivors, caregivers, and health care professionals congregated at Chicago’s Grant Park to kick off the Cancer Survivors’ Celebration and Walk, an annual event now in its fifteenth year that commemorates National Cancer Survivors’ Day. The event, which was held on June 4, was sponsored by the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.

Director of the center, Steven Rosen, MD, said the walk “is a celebration of life and it is a recognition of the great courage of all of our patients and their families.” The event was created to encourage community awareness of cancer and to honor cancer survivors.

After welcoming remarks from Rosen and Ann Lurie, wife of Robert Lurie, participants started the four-mile noncompetitive walk along Chicago’s lakefront and returned to Grant Park for a picnic. Survivors, along with their family and friends, also wrote their thoughts about the cancer experience on several dedication walls temporarily erected in the park.

Robert Lurie, a real estate investor, was treated by Rosen for colon cancer that took his life in 1990. Rosen attributed the clear, sunny morning that ended a rainy week to Lurie, whom he said, “has come through for us every year.”