I don’t walk as much as I used to, or as I should, but last week I joined a crowd of about a hundred people walking in Creve Coeur Park in support of lung cancer survivors. Dubbed “The First Annual Fun Lung Run/walk” by its organizers (a group called the Lung Cancer Connection, sponsored by the Saint Louis University Cancer Center), the idea was for volunteers to recruit teams of people supporting a person they knew who has had lung cancer.

About a dozen teams supported a lung cancer survivor, the other teams honoring others who did not make it. I had a heavily smoking older brother who died of lung cancer four years ago, and a very sweet friend is only a few months post-surgery, so I had ample reason to attend.