A Letter from Gordon Sewall

Dear Friends and Family,

Pan Mass 2019 was a great success by every measure. All team members remained upright for the 86-mile journey from Wellesley to Bourne, the fundraising is ahead of last year with a month yet to go before we reach our goal of $80,000 and close the books on this year, and we proved it is impossible to consume every beer available in the Town of Cohasset on a perfect summer afternoon, although we tried. What fun we had.

The day of the ride started with a 4:30 AM wake up call for team members who traveled from as far away as Chicago and New York and ended with food, drink and non-stop laughter on the back porch here in Cohasset. They are a funny bunch.

The most poignant moment came during a spontaneous “share a moment” session when the riders highlighted the part of the ride most memorable for each of them. As you can imagine, there were many hilarious renderings of near calamities, who rode the hills fastest, etc.

As the laughter paused, the group singled out the moment of greatest meaning, which occurred when they were all together near the end riding as a team in memory of Elizabeth. In their words, “we stopped passing each other and massed together filling the road for a moment with our Team Elizabeth jerseys on proud display.” Many members of the Team never met Elizabeth, but they all know and love Scott and Duncan through college and Camp Dudley connections. She is in them as she is in every one of us. The porch grew silent as we all pondered and affirmed the importance of this moving moment.

“we stopped passing each other and massed together filling the road for a moment with our Team Elizabeth jerseys on proud display.”

Elizabeth made her presence felt on The Pan Mass this year through the power of friendship and a deepening commitment to eliminate breast cancer in our lifetimes. Most importantly, her team met their 86-mile challenge united by friendship, sacrifice, hard work, and fun—qualities Elizabeth embodied in everything she did.

The greater Team Elizabeth has many more riders than were able to participate this year due to previous commitments. As a group, all riders, workers, and donors over the years have made the Elizabeth Alling Sewall Endowment at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute a living memorial and a permanent source of critical support for breast cancer research, a well-earned source of pride for all of us. Thank you.

If you haven’t yet donated but would like to, there’s still time! You can do so with a credit card at the Team Elizabeth PMC page: http://profile.pmc.org/TE0056. Or, you can send a check, making it out to Pan Mass Challenge with the Elizabeth Alling Sewall Endowment on the memo line and mail it to: Gordon Sewall, 57 Wheelwright Farm, Cohasset, MA 02025.

To see a photo album of the 2019 ride, go to:

http://spark.adobe.com/page/dPtzPUl6o9pPg/

With best wishes,

Gordon Sewall