Braylon Springer, 6, left, holds hands and walks under the arch with Tori Coleman, right, during the Relay For Life event Friday afternoon at the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds.
Kendall Springer, left, smiles as Tori Coleman, right, lights the Eternal Flame in honor of Braylon Springer, 6, center, during the Relay For Life event Friday afternoon at the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds. Braylon was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 3.
When Thorbeckes Athletic Club owners, Matt and Andrea Noren, asked our staff at Thorbeckes to help plan a 5K event for local Chehalis 6-year-old girl Braylon Springer, I don’t think there was a single person in the room who hesitated to jump on board with the project.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Braylon Springer, daughter of Noah and Kendall Springer of Chehalis, she’s battling rare and aggressive childhood lung cancer (pleuropulmonary blastoma) for the second time. She recently underwent another lung surgery and will be traveling to the Tacoma-Seattle area five days per week for additional chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
Braylon has been described as the “bravest,” “spunkiest,” “sweetest” “unicorn princess” some have ever met. She loves unicorns and her favorite colors are pink and purple.
Who could say no to a pink sparkly unicorn-themed 5K? All of us wanted to do everything we could to support this local family and encourage this sweet, precious little girl.
We had three weeks to plan and promote the event with a group made up of Thorbeckes staff and community volunteers. Our planning group originally anticipated about 500 participants for the 5K event, hosted at Chehalis Thorbeckes.
I don’t think any of us on staff at Thorbeckes anticipated the groundswell of support that would follow our initial outreach.
Our first step was to secure sponsors. Within hours, we had secured multiple local $500 level sponsors. Within a day, we had two $1,000 level sponsors. But what made it so special was the connection that some of the sponsors had to the cause: The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local PUD chapter were coworkers of Braylon Springer’s dad. Title Guaranty Company were supporters of Braylon during the Amazing Race throughout her first battle with childhood cancer. Young Gun Northwest’s business owners have children who go to the same school as Braylon.
Additional local and family-owned businesses including Woods Bee Co., Michael A White DDS, Northwest Pediatric Center, and Rosendo Reforestation also each had their own connections to the cause.
Campagna Creative came on-board as the official event photographer for the day (incredible photos) to capture all the amazing pink shirts and unicorn costumes and gear. Wagner Orthodontistry made a Poloroid-style photobooth available where everyone took photos that were put into a book for Braylon following the event. Title Guaranty Company and Althauser Rayan and Abbarno provided unicorn goodies and other items to participants at the event.
Numerous $100 and $250 sponsors — including not only businesses, but individual local families — continued to come out of the woodwork all the way up to the event. The back of that pink unicorn 5K T-shirt was full of 100 percent local names, organizations and business.
Even more incredible, once we realized that we would hit 500 participants registered before the day of the event even arrived and the scale of what we were dealing with, local non-profit organization Visiting Nurses graciously agreed to come on board as our official non-profit partner to handle all the funds raised for Braylon. This meant we could give out a tax ID number for eligible contributions, etc.
Lewis County Coffee Company was there the day of the event serving refreshments for donation and raised more than $300. Kona Ice and M&M Kettlecorn also donated a percentage of sales.
More than 30 silent auction items came in as part of the efforts for the day of the event. And, we were fortunate to have local professional auctioneer Todd Mason, of Mason Engineering, there to help us with that piece of the event.
But what was probably most amazing and powerful was watching nearly 1,000 people line up at the start line at Chehalis Thorbeckes last Saturday. And watching 1,000 people strong for Braylon take over Chehalis Avenue in pink shirts and unicorn gear. The sea of pink for Braylon was amazing to see in person. Nearly twice the size of the previous largest Thorbeckes 5K ever.
To be there and feel the love and support that day is something our staff will never forget, I can say that for certain.
After the event, Todd Mason sort of summed up our collective thoughts in a comment on the Thorbeckes Facebook page: “This event was one more example to answer the question ‘Why do you live in a small town?’”
And it’s true. Every single business. Every single organization. Every participant. Every sponsor. They were all local. They all gave something to support a little girl.
The true collective power of community shone through last Saturday. And I, for one, could not have been more honored to be there to have witnessed it.
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Brittany Voie is a columnist for The Chronicle and marketing director for Thorbeckes Athletic Club. You can follow Braylon Springer’s journey at Facebook.com/TeamBraylonSpringer or Instagram.com/Team.Braylon.
