Fitch honors English assignment spawns Sunday's ALS walk

AUSTINTOWN

A class project has turned into a community walk to raise awareness for ALS.

Garen Gibson, a senior at Austintown Fitch, spearheaded the project, Polar Run, participants can run or walk, from 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday on the Fitch track, 4650 Falcon Drive.

Early registration last week logged 82 sign-ups.

“Are you kidding me? It was 40 this morning,” fellow senior Josh Potkanowicz said to Gibson before that tally. That number had increased to 94 earlier this week.

Gibson, Potkanowicz and fellow senior Taylor Phan are all in Honors English and have handled the project. Their teacher said anyone who wasn’t yet part of a community project by the class deadline could join their project.

The reason they wanted to do something associated with ALS – Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease – was because the class was recently reading the book, “Tuesdays with Morrie.”

“It just got huge all of a sudden. It’s not huge or anything – just bigger than we expected,” Gibson said. “She’s all for it, but she’s shocked how far it’s gone.”

ALS is a progressive neuro-degenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. No known cause or cure has been found.

Read more about the event an the organizers in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.