Source: timesleader.com
Author: Mike McGinley
Dr. Loren Grossman and nine of his friends have ridden more than 6,000 miles in the past 10 years – all for a good cause.
The area professionals – ranging from lawyers and doctors to retirees – began participating in the American Cancer Society Bike-a-Thon as a way to have fun with friends while helping to raise money to help find a cure for the disease.
“You come home and you feel good about what you did,” Grossman said. “Everyone knows someone who has been touched by cancer.”
The bike-a-thon, which takes place in Philadelphia, begins on the Ben Franklin Bridge and ends nearly 70 miles away at Buena Vista Camping Park in Buena, N.J.
This year, Grossman said he’ll ride for all those having some type of oral cancer, because he’s a dentist who practices in Kingston.
“A lot of people ride for someone,” he said. “Two years ago, my dad had a brain tumor, so we rode for him.”
Because oral cancer is typically treatable if caught in the early stages, Grossman considers it a worthy cause.
“We either ride for a survivor or someone suffering right now.”
The other locals who ride include Leo Gutstein, Frank Hoegen, Bob Borwick, Ira Grossman, Monte Grossman, Bruce Lefkowitz, John Panzitta, Gerald Mihalik, Dan Fierman and Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tom Leighton, who doesn’t participate in the group’s weekend activities, but makes the trip to Philadelphia for the bike ride.
The men were scheduled to depart this morning; this year they will head to the Rittenhouse Hotel – a new spot for the group.
“We never repeat a restaurant and we never repeat a hotel,” Grossman said.
Last year, Grossman said, the bike-a-thon, which has more than 7,000 participants, raised about $1.8 million. This time around, the American Cancer Society is hoping for about $2 million, he said.
Most of the money raised comes from entry fees and private donations. It’s also a good way to raise awareness, because Philadelphia is flooded with cyclists on the day of the race and the Ben Franklin Bridge is closed for the day.
A downtown Wilkes-Barre businessman, Borwick said his cycling friends refer to themselves as “The Ride 2 Eat” club, because they look forward to a big dinner after completing the race.
And the event is something he looks forward to each year. Because he and his friends generally ride throughout different regions of the Wyoming Valley, as opposed to golfing as many men do, it’s a nice way for them to get away and explore the Philadelphia area.
“It was an opportunity for a bunch of friends to get together and do something fun and it ended up being not only a guys’ weekend away, but something positive for the Cancer Society,” Borwick said.
It’s a shame that an organization as good as ACS doesn’t tell people that what they do for oral cancer wouldn’t fill a thimble (even less than that example) compared to what they do for the big four cancers. Why is this? Because the number of donors, volunteers, disciples etc. etc. is huge in the other cancers, and insignificant in oral cancer. It just does not support a successful business model (which ACS is), and do not think that non profits do not operate from a well defined business model just like the private, for profit sector.
I think this dentist is a great guy for wanting to give back, but he needs to realize that the money that they raise for ACS will not go to change the oral cancer problem. If more people realized this, the cancer micro charities like the Oral Cancer Foundation, would get financial support that ends up staying within organizations that work on those small, less known cancers, many considered “orphan cancers,” since they have no organization championing them at all. If these doctors and their friends raised money for OCF instead as an example, it would directly impact this micro national charity’s ability to affect the changes in the paradigm that allows oral cancer to continue to take so many lives in the US.
The ACS spends more on paper clips every year than my guess of what the OCF’s budget is, yet in spite of that OCF is making positive changes in the OC issue, helping patients that need guidance, proving important current unbiased information to the public, and sponsoring meaningful research related to the disease. They also do not spend HUGE amounts of each dollar that comes into their organization on fundraising, or administration expenses like ACS. An informed population of caring people like those described in this article would change these micro cancer organizations situations, oral cancer being just one of them, if their energies were not spent on adding money to the coffers of a gazillion dollar a year entity like ACS.