WalkAmerica
The March of Dimes walk went great. At the last minute, the girls decided not to come along (just as well — they wouldn’t have walked 6+ miles/10K), but Jenna still did. It was great. The weather was beautiful, and the scenery couldn’t have been much better — Fort Mason, the Marina, Crissy Field, Fort Point, the Presidio, the Palace of Fine Arts. Everyone was really friendly. There were many other family teams, some honoring children who were preemies but are now doing fine, others like us, walking in memory of a child who had died. We met a couple whose daughter had had the same heart defect as Paul did. She lived two and a half years, but never came home; she lived in the same facility in Campbell where Paul would have had to live if he’d ever been released from the hospital. She had *seven* heart surgeries, and didn’t make it through the seventh one. Imagine that! Two and a half years old and seven heart surgeries. Amazing.
We were pretty amazed and humbled at how everyone responded to our fundraising efforts. People were so generous. Even after the walk, we received more money. To date, we’ve raised $5,470. Pretty terrific. We raised so much that we got special “Top Walker” hats.
We’d like to be involved in this event again in the future. We realize we can’t expect to raise that much money every time, so next year we’ll probably just volunteer. Maybe we’ll walk again in 2009, the five-year anniversary of Paul’s birth and death.
For more pictures of the walk, click here.
