Light The Night: The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society hosted its 25th annual Light the Night walk on Oct. 5

Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, LLS, supporters gathered at Cleveland University-Kansas City on Oct. 5 for their annual Light the Night celebration, honoring those affected by blood cancer.

Guests received different colored lanterns — white for survivors, red for LLS supporters and gold for people who have lost someone to cancer.

AP and IB Psychology teacher Brett Kramer has been holding up his lantern almost every year since 2021 when his niece, Carlie Foutch, was diagnosed with myeloid leukemia. To Kramer, the walk makes people feel not so alone. 

“Sometimes people don’t feel like they have the support that they need or deserve,” Kramer said. “Everybody that goes to any kind of LLS event or a walk geared toward either curing cancer or supporting people who are dealing with cancer in their family is uplifting.”

The Light the Night Walk is also one of the biggest fundraising opportunities of the year for the group, according to Campaign Development Manager Kelly Alcock. 

To date, the event has raised more than $381,000, making the organization short of the initial goal of  $750,000. Any supporters are still encouraged to donate.

“Life is good, but life is hard, and we all have resources that we can give to others,” Kramer said. “I think it’s so important to spread joy and for the purposes of what we’re talking about resources.”

Many sponsorship teams had pop-up tents to inform guests about the particular business and raise additional donations. This year, the top community sponsorship teams were Team Laney, Team Lottie & Doug and Team Clara.

One sponsorship team in particular housed the local Honored Hero of the event. The LLS honored heroes are nominated annually by people in the Kansas City community. This can be someone at the cancer center or in the LLS organization. This year the Honored Hero was Lottie Rychlewski.

Rychlewski has been battling pre-b acute lymphoblastic leukemia since she was 6-years-old. Recently Rychlewski, now 8, just rang the bell, symbolizing her last dose of chemotherapy. Patient and Community Outreach Manager Joe Falter said nominating Rychlewski this year was unanimous.

“I think that we knew that they were going to be such a great family to be able to share their story with everyone else,” Falter said. “We look to have a family that is comfortable sharing their story that can help inspire people, so to be able to kind of showcase [Lottie] and her family and everything that they’ve been through was a no-brainer for us.”

The opening ceremony, hosted by FOX4KC anchor Kristen Holloway, consisted of speeches from Former Chiefs player Alex Okafor and Rychlewski’s mother, Cassie.

Following the speeches, Holloway encouraged all guests to light their lanterns one color at a time. All survivors with white lanterns were brought to the center of the event to the “Circle of Survivors” where they were honored attendees. 

Once the opening ceremony concluded, the walk began. Guests walked around the Cleveland University campus in south Overland Park with their colored lanterns illuminating the night. 

“It’s really neat to see people come together with that unfortunate commonality because it makes people feel like they’re not alone,” Kramer said. “We are to be together with this experience in common, and that means a lot to a lot of people.”