On Saturday, August 4th, the members of Team West Neck Pod will once again be participating in the "Sound to Cove" Swim Across America event to raise money for local cancer research and treatment organizations. This is the eighth time our West Neck Pod family of Salt-ophiles has participated in this event, and together over the years we West Neck Pod teammates have raised more than $100,000 to support the cutting-edge research of the SAA beneficiaries, which again this year include our neighbor across the harbor, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, as well as the newly minted Swim Across America Laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Feinstein Institute of North Shore, and the University of Texas MD Anderson Children's Cancer Hospital. This ongoing fight against cancer is personal for all of us who swim in these events. Some of us are cancer survivors ourselves, and all of us have lost friends, family members, colleagues, co-workers or body-parts to this disease: Joanna Grossman's father. Paul Coster's "Mum." Joan Addabbo's brother. Tony Santomauro's mother. Tom Sherman's wife. Alice Rogers' mother. Bonnie Millen's breasts. Evelyn Cruise's father-in-law. Annmarie Kearney-Woods' best friends. My father, aunt, grandparents, and a rapidly increasing roster of dear friends...and just last month, even my beloved French bulldog Daisy Mae.
On Saturday, August 4th, Team West Neck Pod will once again dive into the Salt in honor and in memory of all those whose lives have been impacted by cancer...Whether we swim one mile, three miles (5K) or six miles (10K), we know that we won't be curing cancer that day...but every stroke we take will be bringing us closer to the cure, and we dedicate our swims to those for whom our efforts may be too late.
For those of you who are already members of the 2018 "Team West Neck Pod," thanks for joining (or rejoining) the fight. For those who've swum with us in the past, please consider "re-upping" this year -- and for those of you who've never participated in this event, come join our team as together, stroke by stroke, we continue our naval assault on our common enemy, cancer. See you in the Glen Cove Salt on August 4th! -- Carol (a/k/a "The Fairy Pod-Mother")
