600 Miles on the River for a Good Cause - 28th Annual Tennessee River 600

By Jan Stark, Special to East Memphis Appeal

August 22, 2004

My husband Eric Stark participated in a really an amazing event — a caravan, so to speak, of about 65 personal watercrafts covering 600 miles on the Tennessee river (from Knoxville to Paris Landing).

The event is a fund-raiser and proceeds benefit four Tennessee children’s hospitals and the Tennessee Wild Life Resources Agency.

Eric has participated in this event in honor of our son, Ben Stark, who was treated for cancer in 2000 at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

This was Eric’s second year to participate and he was the top fund raiser for both years. In all, Eric has personally raised over $13,000. Although St. Jude is not a beneficiary of the Tennessee River 600 event, this year Eric contributed his $1,000 in prize money to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Interestingly, the total of Eric’s collections this year was $7,420 and our son Ben’s patient number at St. Jude was 17420.

The Tennessee 600 was covered by reporters from Southern Living Magazine and Tennessee Wildlife Magazine. There is plenty of information about the event itself at tennesseeriver600.com.

Here is a question-and-answer session that Eric participated in:

How did you go about doing this, specifically? And how much money did you raise, exactly?

Eric: “My strategy has been to seek donations from family, friends and co-workers.I think that once you explain what we do and where the funds go that most people want to support. I think it’s important to talk personally to every donor one-on-one so I can answer questions and assure them that their donation is indeed going 100 percent to these children’s hospitals. I made a lot of phone calls, sent E-mails and approached people one-on-one.

“I have found that helping sick children is something that most people want to support. I am very grateful that about 70 individuals said yes and were generous to our cause.

“This year I was able to raise $7420.00. Ironically, and I swear there this was not planned in any way. I was scrambling down to the last minute with my final tally.

“But my 10 year old son Ben’s patient number at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is 17420. I didn’t realize this until last Wednesday but I found this interesting to say the least.”

Why did you feel compelled to raise so much money and how much effort was put into raising the money?

“My 10-year-old son Ben was diagnosed in June of 2000 with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. He was 6 at the time and was treated for six months at St. Jude.

“Our lives (my wife Jan, my 13-year-old son Zach and I) stopped and all of our focus went to Ben’s treatment. We consider ourselves very blessed to have been able to leave the hospital with our son. We grew to know other families there who were not so lucky. I am compelled by the courage of the young patients I came to know there that fought so hard to win their battle against cancer but in the end lost.

“My son is surviving today because people cared enough to support Danny Thomas and the hospital he built 40 years ago. When St. Jude opened in 1962 my son’s chances of survival would’ve been less than 5 percent; today they are at about 50 percent. I believe that we have to get that number higher and that can only be accomplished with more research and we all know that that takes money.

“As far as effort goes, I started on my fund raising the beginning of June. So I was pretty absorbed with it for the eight weeks prior to the event.”

How about on the river run? Any challenges?

“There’s always the weather factor but I think that’s part of the excitement of the journey. We had everything from thunderstorms to long hours in the baking sun.

”You learn to navigate the river and plan your fuel stops. It’s not hard to get yourself in a situation if you aren’t paying attention.”

How did you find out about the Tennessee River 600?

“My family has some cabins at Pickwick so we tend to spend a lot of weekends there. We just happened to lock down with the TNR600 group 3 years ago on our way to Cuba Landing for a two-day boat trip.

“After researching the event on the Web, I decided to give it a shot. I had no idea what to expect and did not know a soul. But I thought it would be something I wouldn’t regret doing at least once.

“My first year I raised around $5,700. I didn’t really expect it to be the most but it was. So this year my goal was to exceed last year.”