By T.L. Petersen

Observer Staff Writer

Peggy Anderson's list is frighteningly long.

The Eastern Oregon University physical education and health professor has divided the list. At the top of the page are those who have died of cancer. At the bottom are those who are survivors.

This weekend Anderson and many others will be remembering both the survivors and those lost to cancer at La Grande's American Cancer Society Relay for Life.

Approximately 10 teams of walkers are preparing to circle the luminary-lit EOU track beginning at 4 p.m. Friday and throughout the night and Saturday morning.

They will be raising pledges for the Cancer Society's research efforts, and remembering.

Some of the remembering will be of the walkers' own struggles.

Ellen Barton, active locally helping the cancer society and those with a cancer diagnosis, remembers when she was diagnosed with a late-stage cancer. Her doctors told her that with aggressive treatment, she might increase her chances of survival to 50 percent.

Anderson herself has survived two bouts of cancer, but has lost family members, including a sister.

And Ralph Woodward, an associate professor of education at Eastern, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, in stage four, as he was finishing his doctorate at Iowa State University more than a decade ago. His chances of survival then? "Less than 20 percent," he recalls.

Like Barton, Woodward now talks with other cancer patients, in a way not even most doctors can.

"You have to go through the process," he explains. "I understand what they're going through."

For Anderson, part of the process of surviving cancer is learning about community and support.

During her chemotherapy treatments, "someone in the community drove me to Walla Walla every day for chemo," she said. "That really broadened my outlook on the community."

The survivors want to deliver a few messages about cancer.

Early detection and early treatments are key to surviving cancer, they say, but why some people survive and some don't is such a complex issue that it is almost beyond understanding.

"I quit asking why treatment worked for me," Barton said, "and now I just am blessed every day."

"After a while," Wood-ward adds, "you just have to realize it's just the way it is."

Cancer, all the survivors stress, isn't always — or even often — a matter of risk factors and lifestyles. Barton notes that 85 percent of woman diagnosed today with breast cancer have no familial risk factors.

Barton has been involved with the local Relay for Life since it began in about 1998. The relay has continued each year, except for one year when only remembrance luminaries were lit in a downtown park.

Anderson, who will be placing luminaries around the Eastern track remembering all of the school's survivors and those lost, had arranged to have the track lights turned on one year. But the walkers decided that the light of the luminaries — candles placed in paper bags with a cancer victim's name on it — were sufficient.

Along with early diagnosis and treatment, Barton said the American Cancer Society works to educate people and decrease cancer-caused deaths.

"We've come a long way," Anderson said, "and we have to thank research." Her own cancer, she was later told, only had a 20 percent chance of being detected without her careful regular exams.

While the teams of walkers already are set up for Friday night's Relay for Life, there are ways to participate, Barton said.

Any cancer survivor in the area is welcome to come and walk the first lap on the Eastern track at 4 p.m. to kick off the event.

In addition, luminary remembrances can be purchased either at trackside Friday evening or from American Cancer Society members.

A special remembrance ceremony for anyone touched by cancer will begin at 9 p.m. as the luminaries are lit and placed around the track to burn through the night.

Anyone who can make a donation is urged to come by the EOU track during the Relay for Life and leave it there. Donations

can also be made by calling Heather Cashell at 962-3626 or 663-8859.

The relay will run from 4 p.m. Friday to 10 a.m. Saturday.