Author: ABOH Staff
“Truthfully, we had no idea what we were doing; we just knew we had to do something,” said Michele O’Brien, MSN, DNP, AOCNS, and a former nurse navigator, as her mind wandered back to the very first Lung Run/Walk Twin Cities. Michelle was one of the driving forces that brought together multiple lung cancer patients and their families in 2007 to start making waves in the Minnesota lung cancer community.
The small but mighty group included Michele, lung cancer patients Judy Golz, MJ McKeon, Mike Corcoran, Bernice Collins, and family members Shanna Ballsrud, and Lorie Beerling. While the founding members came from different backgrounds, they shared a common denominator: lung cancer and a passion for educating others to spread awareness about America’s number one cause of cancer death.
“All of us in this founding group agreed on one thing – we didn’t know what to do at first, but we knew we had to do something,” said Lorie. “Judy had recently returned from a lung cancer 5K event in Chicago, which inspired us to look into doing one ourselves.”
“Our desire was to create a sense of community. The stigma around lung cancer made lung cancer patients feel like they weren’t worthy of support. We wanted to fight back against that extremely hurtful stigma and get lung cancer patients the support and help that they needed. We wanted to create a safe and supportive environment for patients and families to learn about lung cancer and to feel uplifted while raising funds to flight this terrible cancer,” said Shanna.
From that moment on, the founding crew went full force into grassroots planning the first Lung Run/Walk Twin Cities. While none of the founding members had experience putting on a 5K event, this bootstrap effort made their passion feel palpable. “We didn’t do any formal paid marketing,” said Michelle. “Everything was purely word-of-mouth and a result of just going out there and trying to express to others what we were doing. We contacted the Minnesota Department of Health for free radon kits, which helped put us on their radar. We called Kare11 News, and they agreed to feature us.”
“With this first event, we wanted to emphasize that true survivorship is about making life work for where you are now,” Lori recalls. We encouraged people to come even if they couldn’t run or walk much anymore. We had wheelchairs available and made them accessible to patients and family members with challenging health conditions.”
Approximately 250 participants registered the day before the event. While happy with that number, they would be greeted with a big surprise the following morning when an additional 400 people showed up at Lake Calhoun.
“It was exhilarating to have so many more people than we expected. But it was also overwhelming because we didn’t have enough t-shirts,” MJ chuckled.
To the founding group’s joy, the Lung Run/Walk was a roaring success and raised over $75,000, prompting them to gather a board of directors and officially found A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation in 2008.
“We never saw the Lung Run/Walk as a one-time event. We wanted to make a big splash in the Minnesota lung cancer community. While we had a big vision for impact, we never thought it would turn into everything that A Breath of Hope is today,” says Michele.
In 2024, A Breath of Hope is celebrating its 18th Annual Lung Run/Walk Twin Cities and is expecting 1,400+ attendees, thanks to a group of passionate people who wanted to ensure that no lung cancer survivor ever walked on this journey alone.
