Evergreen Park's Christmas Without Cancer on Duffy's Dance Card

Lower Bear Creek is way off the path from Circle Park in Evergreen Park, by design the proposed location for the 6th Annual Christmas Without Cancer's 5K originally scheduled for September 19.

Mary Margaret Duffy will be hiking the Colorado Springs park Saturday in tribute to her late father, Dan Duffy. Back home here, a team called "Dance With Duff" will raise funds for Christmas Without Cancer while honoring a friend lost to the monster cancer.

"I am going to wear an old tee-shirt of his," said Mary Margaret from Colorado. "I don't know which one yet."

While the Dance With Duff team would prefer to have Duffy's kids leading the way, they also know physical distance was never an obstacle from one Duffy heart to the other.

"I'll run that path I used to take when I would call my dad every week on the phone," said Mary Margaret. "Every time we would talk on the phone I would hike the path they call Lower Bear Creek Park.

"The last time I got to talk to him, I sat on a bench there for an hour and just listened to all the things he had to say."

Duff's home and heart were anchored to 109th Street in Morgan Park where he and his deceased wife Cathy raised their two children. The proud dad routinely bragged about his daughter's accomplishments academically in Colorado and her courage finding her own career in social work and her own voice and path in life.

Christmas Without Cancer's funds this year are coming from a host of runners and walkers stepping out "on their honor" to twirl an unusual calendar year into another campaign of giving to help local families fighting cancer.

"This year requires more faith," said Deb Gardner, Christmas Without Cancer race director.

"Dance With Duff" is a traveling ballroom full of faith and faithful friends.

The team re-conceptualized from the group known as the "VPs" honor the life of Duffy, a cancer victim and one of the original members of a group comprised of St. Cajetan, St. Barnabas and Red's Drive-In alumni. Duff, 65, died last February before the pandemic took hold of everyone's way of life.

Mary Margaret and her brother Tim greeted their dad's close friends for hours at Donnellan Funeral Home. They announced plans for a tribute party to coincide with the Christmas Without Cancer's 5K September 19, 2020. Such plans will take shape again, someday.

Duffy's close friend Bill Mitchell and his wife Lori have supported Christmas Without Cancer for years. Before his death, Duffy attended and contributed discreetly to the couple's annual fundraiser, a CWC Christmas party.

"The year Duff was diagnosed with cancer he came before the party started bearing gifts and made a generous donation to Christmas Without Cancer, " said Mitchell. "He wasn't feeling well and left early. He found out a short time later why."

Despite cancer, Duff vowed to be back the following year. He made it.

"At the end of the night in the sub-terrain part of the basement, every women at the party had a dance with Duff so that is the name we came up with for this year's run – Dance With Duff."

In sync with Mary Margaret's Colorado solo hike, Dance With Duff will glide through the community. Tim, who works in insurance in Chicago, thinks that's the way Duff would have wanted it.

Just hearing the words "Dance With Duff" causes his kids to get choked up.

"The emotion is not just about missing my dad, it's the realization that his life was fuller because all the VPs who are now a team called 'Dance With Duff'," said Tim. "My dad would be so proud to be part of Christmas Without Cancer, and if he could get his hands on the tee shirt, he'd wear it for an eternity."

Tim has found comfort with his dad's many friends who organized the effort:
Bill "Harpo" and Lori Mitchell, Tom and Joyce Quinn, Bill and Elyse Quinn, Marty Fitzgerald, Shirley "Sissy" Duffy, Peggy Duffy Demmitt, Norean Mitchell, Tim and Colleen Greenfield, Terry Mitchell, Gerry and Chris Kutsche, Chris Ulreich, Jennifer Twitty, Sally Duffy, Caitlin and Joe Choinski and Victoria DioGuardi.

Dance With Duff joins other teams already formed and still in their planning stages: Amber's Army, Anthony's Avengers, the CWC Committee, Efrain's Wolfpack, IronMatt, Kim's Ministry Silly Walkers, Nick's Fight, to cite a few.

"One step at a time but always in the right direction – helping people," said
Gerri Neylon, Christmas Without Cancer founder.
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