Scrabble walk and carnival will help cure blindness

Photo

SPECIAL TO THE VINDICATOR From left to right are the Hoffmans, Sarah, Sean, Mike, Olivia and Kim, and Carmella Abraham, president of the Canfield Lions Club.

Staff report

SALEM

Canfield Lions Club and Eyes of Olivia will have their second annual Scrabble Fun Walk and Carnival for a Cure on Sept. 21 at Memorial Park in Salem.

Proceeds from the family-friendly event will benefit the Curing Retinal Blindness Foundation.

Check-in will begin at 12:30 p.m., and the walk will begin at 2 p.m. Games and activities begin at 1 p.m.

How it works: Take a walk along the nature paths and trails of the park. Along the way, stop and collect Scrabble tiles at each checkpoint along the route. At the end, use them to create a word or words and earn points for prizes.

Prizes so far include a family season pass to the Akron Zoo, YSU football and basketball tickets with a signed football, four tickets to Disney on Ice at the Covelli Center in December and a gift card to Zip City in Akron.

Other prizes include four tickets to the Easy Street Productions Christmas Show and four passes for miniature golf at Sports World in Boardman.

In addition to the Scrabble Fun Walk there will be games and activities for all ages, such as a hook and ring game, a rubber chicken chucking game, Tic Tac Toe, football toss run by YSU players, beat the dealer and games for children.

There will be train rides, a story time skit, a karate demonstration, pumpkin painting, face painting, music by a DJ and a mob ribbon dance.

Tickets will be available for purchase that day for the games and activities. Fair-type food vendors will be selling their goods.

The advance registration fee is $10 for the Scrabble Fun Walk; $15 the day of the event. Registration is available online or a form can be downloaded from www.eyesforolivia.org. Click on the Scrabble Event link for information and access to the forms.

The Curing Retinal Blindness Foundation comprises about 30 families across the country as well as Mexico and Europe having one or more children diagnosed with a rare genetic disease affecting the retina of the eye, causing progressive vision loss. The foundation raises money to fund research toward a cure.

The Hoffman family of Salem discovered in 2009 that their daughter Olivia, then 4, had a rare form of retinal dystrophy call Lebers Congenital Amaurosis. Although Olivia still has a significant amount of vision, without a cure she will continue to slowly lose her vision until it is gone.

The Hoffman family and the other families in the foundation have raised enough money to fund five research projects. Details of them, as well as additional information, can be found at www.crb1.org.