Relay For Life Speakers to Share Hope

The Mansfield Relay For Life Planning Committee has announced this year’s event speakers.

Mansfield resident and cancer survivor Martha Maher, 66, will be this year’s opening speaker, and Dorchester resident and cancer survivor Erin McCabe, 40, will be the closing speaker.

Both will recount intimate perspectives on their journey with the disease and share the message that you can live fully and go on after a cancer diagnosis.

Twenty five years ago, cancer was a distant thought when Maher’s mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. Tests quickly showed it has metastasized, and chemotherapy and radiation were suddenly on the docket. Three weeks later, her mother passed away.

Soon after, Maher, a Mansfield native, walked in North Attleboro’s first Relay For Life. In the few short years following, her sister was diagnosed with uterine cancer and her brother with prostate cancer. Finally, Maher learned she herself had breast cancer, and her treatment eventually included a double mastectomy.

She was signed up as soon as Mansfield hosted its own Relay, first as a walker, then as a volunteer and now, for many years, as a planning committee member. She says she participates for those cancer patients who will surly come after her.

McCabe was 30 years old when she was diagnosed with Acute lymphoblastic leukemia – a month after the Red Sox won the first World Series in 86 years, five months after she purchased her first condo and two weeks before she finished her MBA at Northeastern.

McCabe, an Arlington native, is featured in "Everything Matters," a documentary, currently in post-production, focused on five inspiring patients of Dr. Ann Webster, director of cancer programs at the Benson-Henry Institute at Massachusetts General.

Similar to Maher, McCabe’s journey took many turns. Eventually, she received a bone marrow transplant from her only sibling, her brother Jamie McCabe, a Boston EMT. The chances of the two of them being the perfect match were only 25 percent.

McCabe says she has a strong sense of responsibility to give back to those battling the disease, including speaking or encouraging Relay For Life participants.

Relay For Life is the nationwide signature activity of the American Cancer Society, and has raised more than $4 billion since its inception in 1985. This is Mansfield’s 10th year hosting a Relay.

The overnight team fundraising event, which has brought together more than 3.5 million people worldwide, invites teams of families, friends, neighborhoods, corporations and community organizations to walk or run around a track in shifts, keeping one member of the team on the track at all times.

For more information on Mansfield’s Relay For Life – or to register for free as a cancer survivor – visit www.RelayForLife.org/MansfieldMA.

Theresa Freeman is technology chairman for the Mansfield Relay For Life.