The Free to Breathe 5K will raise money for lung cancer awareness. Chi Omega is hosting the 5K on Halloween morning. Photo by Christy Bullins

by MARY ELIZABETH ROBERTSON
Lifestyles Reporter

Like many freshmen, Beth A. Hicks, senior elementary education major, was looking forward to college. She planned to go to class, meet new people and have fun.

What she didn’t plan on was an event that would change the rest of her life.
Hicks’ mom died of lung cancer.

“It was fall break of my freshman year,” Hicks said. “My sister and I went to see her and they said she had only a few days to live. She passed away that next night.”

Hicks is passionate about spreading the word that there are multiple ways of getting lung cancer and disproving the common misconception that smokers are solely susceptible.

“My mom was a nonsmoker; she never smoked a day in her life,” Hicks said. “People don’t understand that hairspray, cleaning products [and] other things can cause it.”

According to thetimesnews.com, lung cancer kills approximately 160,000 people in the United States each year — more people than breast, colon and prostate cancers combined.

The number of lung cancer patients who have never smoked is 10 to 15 percent, also according to the Web site.

Inspired to raise lung cancer awareness for nonsmokers and due to a need to honor her mother, Hicks, her sister and father started the Susan C. Hicks Hope Charities.

Hicks’s mother was a children’s and youth director, and because children were her passion, the family began giving away an annual $2,000 scholarship to an aspiring educator at Hicks’s high school.

The family also decided to walk in the Free to Breathe 5K in Raleigh Nov. 8, 2008 and the event inspired Hicks to organize her own in Boone.

Hicks said her mother loved to walk.

“My mom and dad started to walk after she began chemotherapy, when she could do it,” Hicks said. “When she couldn’t do it anymore, I decided that ‘I’m going to walk for her,’ because she couldn’t.”

Because Hicks’ mother was a Chi Omega member at Appalachian State University, Hicks approached her sorority, also Chi Omega, to see if it would be interested in sponsoring the event.

The chapter took a vote and majority won, so Hicks established a committee that has been working on the event since May.

“Our chapter wanted to do this,” senior political science major and Chi Omega President Janison A. Dillon said. “We knew it was going to be a lot of work, but [that] it would be a great way to raise money for a great cause and to honor [Hicks’s] mother.”

Kellie E. Aycock, senior elementary education major, is Chi Omega’s recreational chair. She is also Hicks’s best friend.

“I met Beth my sophomore year,” Aycock said. “I never met her mom, but I know her mom now, through Beth.”

After much planning, the first Free to Breathe 5K and one-mile run/walk is Saturday at 8 a.m. on Duck Pond Field and is open to students and community members.

Online registration at freetobreathe.com ends tomorrow, but registration will also be available at the event.

“This isn’t just for my mom,” Hicks said. “It is for everyone and anyone, to show that any kind of cancer does hit here.”

During the Free to Breathe 5K in Raleigh, Hicks heard a testimony from Taylor Bell, a senior lung cancer survivor and Chi Omega member at East Carolina University.

Bell will be speaking at Saturday’s event.

Photo by Christy Bullins  |  The Appalachian

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