Saturday morning May 13 over 170 participants, were blessed with good weather, taking to the trail at Delco Park, Walking 4 Hearing to raise awareness for hard of hearing and Deaf causes. Registration began at 8:30 with pre-walk speeches at 9:30 and the exercise starting at 10:00. Volunteers walked 3.1 miles or 2 ½ trips around the park. Saturday marked nine years for the event in Dayton with hearing, hard of hearing and Deaf attendees with interpreters present as well as alumni from Sinclair Community College and Wright State University.
Local and national on site sponsors included ADA (Americans with Disabilities), Hearing Solutions, Otterbein Senior Lifestyle Choices, Med-EL, Cochlear.com, Captel Captioned Phones, Clear Captions, Cochlear Community, Hearing Loss Magazine and Phonak.
Event shirts and souvenirs were available along with pizza and refreshments for participants.
Elsa’s Mexican Restaurant, Kings Island, Bagger Dave’s, Upper Cut, Starbucks, Roosters, KI Cares, Yankee Candle Co., HLAA Dayton Chapter, Smart Style as well as individual donators provided everything from park passes, to coffee necessities, toys, beauty and hair products, pet supplies, food, candy and other cool free stuff that were auctioned off, post walk.
Other walks took place in Cincinnati, West Chester, Rockland, and Milwaukee. Nationwide the Walk4Hearing takes place in 20 cities. Since 2006, Walk4Hearing has raised over $12 million and welcomed 80,000 walkers serving as the nation’s largest and rapidly-expanding hearing loss fundraising and public awareness Walk in the country.
Clear Choice Photo booth was on hand supplying individual and group fun with masks and props for the photogenic inclined. DJ K.J. was set up pumping out a diverse set of tunes from pop, R&B, and some good old rock n’ roll via AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses.
Over $5,000 was collectively raised by the top seven fundraisers including Hunter Samworth,
Retta Ott, Mary Jo Wittrock, Deborah Schaaf, Linda Fowler, Nikki Collier and Kaiah Ferry.
