Saturday, April 28, 2007

Help Fight Lou Gehrig Disease [J. Mark English]

This Sunday, April 29, 2007 beginning at 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm, the American Legends store will be hosting the Kick-Off Open House in anticipation of the Westchester Walk to D'Feet ALS. If you live in the New York Metro area please find time in your day to stop by. The store is located at 1107 Central Park Avenue in Scarsdale, New York. If you have any questions please call us at (914) 725-2225.

There will be refreshments, 2006 Walk Awards, the chance to pick up Walk promotional materials and you can enter to win a pair of Jersey Boys tickets.

If you would like to RSVP for the event (the Walkathon) you can call 1-800-672-8857 or email Walk@als-ny.org.

As stated earlier, the event at the store will be in anticipation of the Walk to D'Feet ALS. Here is some more information about this event:
Sunday, June 10, Tibbetts Brook Park, Yonkers.
Check-in time: 10 am
Walk: 11 am
Distance: 3 miles
Goal: $250,000 (last year the walk raised more than $200,000)
Q104.3 will be there and there will be other entertainment and refreshments.
Directions and additional info are on the ALS site @ als-ny.org.
Anyone can form a walk team -- a team can be as little as 1 person or as many as you'd like.
Facts about ALS:
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis is a progressive, fatal neuromuscular disease that slowly robs the body of its ability to walk, speak, swallow and eventually to breath.
Approximately 5,600 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with ALS each year. The incidence of ALS (two per 100,000 people) is five times higher than Huntington's disease and about equal to multiple sclerosis. It is estimated that as many as 30,000 Americans may have the disease at any given time.
Although the life expectancy of an ALS patient averages about two to five years from the time of diagnosis, this disease is variable and many people live with quality for five years and more. More than half of all patients live more than three years after diagnosis.
Every 90 minutes a person is diagnosed with ALS, and every 90 minutes another person will lose his or her life from the disease.
ALS can strike anyone at any age. There is no known cause or cure.

ALS has affected the lives of many in a profound, and many times sad way. In the despair that this disease causes, many try to find a glimmer of hope. Through the ALS Walk to D'Feet ALS, one can walk towards a new hope that a cure may be found.

The great people in history take despair and conquer it with overwhelming hope. Lou Gehrig represents the best hope has to offer, and it is why this disease is named after him. Its poignant that he should be the namesake of this terrible disease. He represented in his time the perfect man. He was the "Iron Horse". Setting the record for most games played in a row for professional baseball. A record that stood for nearly sixty years. A man of such strength surely could not be brought down by anything. But such myth's are easily disproved, and fortune had it out for Mr. Gehrig. He took his "bad break" with a resolve to remain strong in the face of certain death. Here is a brief look of how he exhibited hope in his darkest hours from Ken Burn's Baseball:



Please do what you can to support the efforts of ALS Association to find a cure.