Race will aid runner facing new challenge
2/28/2008 Tacoma, WA Craig Hill theNewsTrib.com When Rochel Cobb thinks of her dad, she thinks of running. She thinks of the frigid jogs together through the snow when she was a girl. She remembers the family reunions her dad organized at various fun runs around the country. And, perhaps most vividly, she remembers the day in 2004 when her dad finished the Avenue of the Giants Marathon 10 years after doctors told him he’d never run again. So in August, when her dad, Bobby Goddard, learned he had a life-threatening form of tongue cancer, she knew the perfect way to honor him. Cobb’s idea was the Live, Love, Run! a race through Point Defiance Park she hopes will become an annual event. She says her goal for the run on Saturday is to raise money to cover the more than $30,000 in treatment and to encourage people to “pursue things despite adversity.” Eventually, the Goddard family hopes the run will fund a health awareness center it wants to open in Bobby Goddard’s honor. Bobby Goddard, a 57-year-old general contractor in Tacoma, started radiation treatment in late January. Doctors say there is a 50-percent chance the treatment will work. If it doesn’t, Goddard’s wife, Jamie, says doctors may have to remove part of Bobby’s tongue. Bobby has beaten longer odds. In 1994, he fell 25 feet off of a roof and broke 14 bones including his hips and a leg. “It was pretty terrible,” said Jamie Goddard. “He had pulleys over [...]