When Williston Park resident Christine Joneliet participates in the 12th annual Long Island Pancreatic Research Walk next month, she will be thinking about her late father, Enzo Guidi.
Joneliet still vividly remembers the shock of losing her father at age 57, just six months after he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
She and members of her family will be wearing T-shirts bearing his picture as they walk to raise money for pancreatic cancer research at the Jones Beach event on Oct. 14.
Joneliet said she and her family first began to walk to honor her father’s memory by raising money to improve ways of detecting and defeating the disease he died from in July 2008. And they plan to continue to walk in the future.
“Pancreatic cancer is particularly devastating because there’s no early detection,” Joneliet said. “A lot of people are affected at a young age. Most of the time, when you find out you have pancreatic cancer, you’re in an advanced stage.”
When the disease was detected in her father, she said, it had already advanced to the fourth stage, when it had spread throughout his body.
“It’s just a shock that so quickly he was lost,” Joneliet said. “He always believed in enjoying life, enjoying each moment. It’s ironic that he lived such a short life, but he lived every moment of it.”
She remembers her father as a vivacious presence and the center of her family’s life.
The T-shirts Joneliet and her family had made in her father’s memory also bear a phrase he was fond of: Life is about the journey, not the destination.
Enzo’s life journey included time devoted to community service.
A resident of Little Neck, he was a member of New Hyde Park Elks Lodge 2107 for three years and a member of the Floral Park Masons Lodge 1016 for five years.
Joneliet said both organizations annually donate money in her father’s memory to the Lustgarten Foundation, the organization that sponsors the Pancreatic Research Walk at Jones Beach and in other places around the country. She said that she’s had helped raise $6,000 since she began participating in it four years ago.
The foundation was created by Cablevision Systems Corp. after its vice chairman, Marc Lustgarten, was diagnosed with the disease at age 52 in 1998. Lustgarten died the following year and the foundation has raised a total of $42 million for pancreatic cancer research in the intervening years.
The Jones Beach walk has raised $8.2 million and is projected to raise $1 million from it this year, with all the money going toward pancreatic cancer research, according to Kerri Kaplan, Lustgarten Foundation executive director.
She said participation has soared from a few hundred walkers the first year to 6,000 people expected to take part this year.
“It unites people from Long Island area because they want to raise funds for research to fight cancer,” she said. “We encourage people to form a team and come with friends and family.”
Kaplan said the Lustgarten Foundation also encourages walkers to enlist sponsors to supplement the minimum $50 fee each walker pays to participate.
Joneliet and her family have formed Team Enzo Guidi and will be out in force that Sunday.
Her mother, Palma; husband, Christopher; daughter, Amber, 8; son, and son, Aidan, 5 will be walking along with her sister, Jennifer, and brother, Enzo. She will also bring her one-year-old daughter, Ava Rose, who never knew her grandfather.
“It’s sad. I know I’m there because I lost my father. You remember good times, but I wish my father was still with us.” Joneliet said.
But she said she feels a strong sense of solidarity with the other walkers, many of whom also wear T-shirts in tribute to loved ones afflicted with the disease or who have succumbed to it.
“To see many people come out, it makes you feel sad and heartfelt for those who’ve gone through it as we did,” Joneliet said. “I just hope someday other people don’t have to go through such a tragic loss.”
The walk covers a distance one to three miles or three miles on the Jones Beach boardwalk at field 5.
On-site registration begins at 9 a.m. and the walk begins at 9:30 a.m. All those interested in participating can register the day of the walk or in advance online at www.curePC.org.
