Teens get chance to walk in 3-day breast cancer event

“I think if you ask any one of us what’s the worst disease there is, we’d each answer breast cancer,” said Jessica Giannotti.

From that single sentiment, Giannotti said, came their lifelong dream to one day walk in the Susan G. Komen Atlanta three-day walk, scheduled to begin Friday and end on Sunday.

In 1997, they say, Witmer was 29 and four months pregnant when doctors told her she had breast cancer. She gave birth that same year to a healthy baby girl and soon joined the Komen fight.

Three years later in the summer of 2000, she was sitting on the beach with a group of friends, including Anne Schatz, when they decided to put a name to their effort -- Walkers for Knockers.

Witmer, Schatz said, fought hard, but the cancer eventually spread to her brain. She died in the spring of 2004.

“It was hard watching somebody die that young,” said Schatz at her home in Marietta on Tuesday.

When it happened, Giannotti and her friends Emily Burgett, Sarah Buhler, Courtney Ritter, Paige Kagan and Schatz’s son Jack were in the fourth grade, but the pain of Witmer’s death was inescapable even to them. Witmer was a member of their close-knit east Cobb community. They were friends of her daughter Sarah, now 13. They’d each become involved in one aspect or another of the Komen walk.

Sometimes, they were the cheerleaders urging their moms to the finish line. Other times, they were the volunteers helping set up the pink tents.

Over the years, nearly a half-dozen more women they know, including some from the neighborhood, would be diagnosed with breast cancer, too. Giannotti’s aunt died. And Ritter’s late grandfather Don Davis, known among Komen walkers as the hula skirt guy, was a Komen supporter through and through.

With every diagnosis, with every passing of another loved one, the teens repeated the dream to the universe: I want to walk, too, someday.

The Walton High School juniors, all 16, were eating a celebratory dinner after the walk last year when they learned that someday had finally arrived. An organizer told one of their mothers that at age 16 they could sign up to walk with a guardian.

“We signed up right away,” said Ritter.

They started training every Sunday, walking for up to 16 miles each time.

In July, they began their fundraising efforts. To qualify for the 60-mile walk, they each had to raise $2,300; donations, organizers say, are used to pay for vital global breast cancer research and local community programs.

“A great example of that is just last year alone, Komen for the Cure paid for half a million breast cancer screenings for women who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to get them,” said Jenne Fromm, national spokeswoman for the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure.

That’s important because more than 1.3 million women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year and more than 465,000 people die, she said.

“I rarely meet a person that hasn’t been touched by this disease in some significant way, and that’s why we will see thousands of men and women this weekend push their muscles to the limits and walk,” said Fromm.

And that’s why the Walkers for Knockers, who number 13 if you count the adults on the team, will be there.

“It means a lot for us to be able to do it with our moms this year and to do our part to help find a cure,” said Kagan.

As of last count, the Walkers for Knockers had raised nearly $30,000, money collected from bake sales, a silent auction and a letter-writing campaign. Last year, Fromm said, the Atlanta walk collected $5.6 million.

Organizers expect to meet or exceed that goal this year, she said.

“This event really is a community,” said Fromm. "And like most communities, we have all kinds -- all shapes, sizes, physical conditions. We have both genders. We have people going through treatment and recovering from loss. We have people here to celebrate and here to grieve.”

The Walkers for Knockers, no doubt, will do a little bit of both. They will walk in memory of Witmer, Michelle Giannotti, Mildred Lemar and Phyllis Rosenberg. They will also celebrate cancer survivors still in their lives like Marcia Berlin.

And they will bask in knowing they no longer have to sit on the sidelines cheering; that they can finally walk the walk; that they’ve inspired another generation to join them.

“Our siblings now want to do it,” said Ritter.