Day for giving: Thanksgiving Gratitude Run to benefit Peters Township Family
Aaron Smith, 44, of Peters Township, told his wife before he passed away that cancer “brought more good to my life than bad,” his wife, Jessica, recalled. “When he said it, I shook my head and said I didn’t think I agreed. But there was a lot of good that came from this,” she said.
From the tragedy experienced by the Smith family came a new opportunity to help others in need.
Smith, beloved husband and father of three children, died November 16, 2023, after a hard-fought battle with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, and was the inspiration for The Gratitude Run, a 5k run held along the Montour Trail in Peters Township for the first time on Thanksgiving Day 2023 to benefit the Smith Family.
The effort raised close to $100,000, Jessica Smith said. It was so successful, race planner Chris Weiss, Smith’s neighbor, saw a way to help others in the community and created a nonprofit with the idea of making it an annual event.
The Gratitude Run (participants may also walk) is scheduled for this Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, at 9 a.m., starting at the softball fields in Peters Township behind Peterswood Park. The event will benefit the Serena family of Peters Township. Jeff Serena, husband, father and local business owner, is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.
There is no charge to register for the run at https://www.thegratituderun.org/.
Weiss and his wife, Joy, proposed the idea of a run to benefit the family at a party held at Aaron Smith’s request just a couple of weeks before he died.
“When the doctors came to us early in November last year and told us there was nothing more they could do, and he would have a few months, Aaron turned to me and said, ‘Can we have a party?’ The open house was attended by hundreds. Weiss asked the Smiths at that time if he could organize a run with a GoFundMe to help with expenses.
“It just emphasizes how this community has been so amazing. Chris and Joy came to us and said, ‘We’d like to do this run, we’d like to set up this GoFundMe,’ and I was initially reluctant because I felt like everybody had already done so much for us. Chris said, ‘People want to help, and this is a way for them to help.’ So we agreed,” Jessica Smith said.
The first run was hastily pulled together by Weiss to help the Smith family, but Aaron Smith would pass away a week before the run took place.
Weiss put a pamphlet together and spread the word. He had no idea if there would be five people or a hundred participants. News of the run went viral pretty quickly, Weiss said, to the extent that the township called him to ask what he was planning.
“That morning was a really tough day; it was Thanksgiving, it was just a few days after the funeral. But, we had this run to go to. It was a beautiful cool, crisp morning, not a cloud in the sky, and we got up and we went, and I’m so glad we did,” Jessica Smith said. “We showed up and saw more than 300 people there, everyone walking up, hugging us. Instead of sitting home being sad, we had this amazing community just continuing to rally around us.”
In addition to his work as an attorney, Aaron Smith was involved in the community, coaching teams for his children, Wyatt, 14, Sadie, 12, and Josie, 10, and serving on the township planning commission, among other boards. “He was always ready to lend a hand to a friend or neighbor and even help serve meals with the kids and me at the City Mission during Thanksgiving while he was going through chemotherapy. No matter how much pain he was in, he would have a smile on his face and say he was good. This Gratitude Run and giving back to others couldn’t be more aligned with who he was at his core.”
Jessica Smith said the funds will go toward her children’s education. “It’s just a huge burden lifted off of me because I’m now the primary breadwinner,” she said.
Following the 2023 run, Weiss formed a 501c3 and put together an all-volunteer board of directors, with Jessica Smith serving as marketing director and secretary. Their plan is to continue helping a family in the community each Thanksgiving.
“We are keeping it in Peters Township now with the hope that someone else will replicate it in other communities in order to help as many people as we can,” Weiss said.
“One thing I’ve learned through this is everyone is going through something; we all have some burden we are carrying through life, and if we can just help each other and let people know you’re not alone, there’s this community around you and what better day to than Thanksgiving to kick off that season of giving and maybe burn a few calories before we start eating a lot,” Jessica Smith said.