Need a reason to join the fight against cancer? Take a look at any edition of The Vicksburg Post between last Thursday and Sunday, and there are plenty of reasons.

Thursday we let cancer survivors tell their stories in their own words. Friday and Saturday we covered Warren County’s Relay for Life, and Sunday, we featured two unique stories of the struggles of a local teen and an 82-year-old veteran of nuclear testing.

With each and every word we had the opportunity to share in those stories is reason to give. Here in Warren County we are good at giving. Our residents supply more than $1 million each year in funding for the United Way.

Relay for Life has a much smaller goal of $47,000, and there is no reason it shouldn’t be reached and far exceeded.

“Before the event we had raised about $14,000 toward the goal,” American Cancer Society representative

Scarlet Fowler said during Friday’s Relay. “We usually hit the goal by September. There’s a fundraiser in the fall that contributes about $20,000.”

Giving to the American Cancer Society through Relay for Life we hope can one day make these struggles featured over the weekend a relic of the past.

No more would a 17-year-old like Afton Wallace be longing for her 18th birthday so “floodgates will be open” to participate in clinical trials. No more would an 82-year-old Edmund McMaster struggle with aftereffects of chemotherapy after being exposed to radiation in his 20s.

“We want the community to know this event is for the community and they need to know what the American Cancer Society can do for them as far as benefits,” Relay for Life participant Mazella Thomas said. “That’s why we do this.”

The reasons are clear. Now it’s time to give.