WTOC, Savannah, Georgia, news, weather and sports | "Super" Outcome for the United Way Walk the Walk

"Super" Outcome for the United Way Walk the Walk

It was supposed to storm.

90% probability.

Even a chance for hail and tornadoes.

Not the forecast you want to hear if you're Patty Jensen, the organizer of the United Way's Walk the Walk scheduled for smack dab in the middle of Friday's miserable forecast.

"We're hosed aren't we?" I emailed Patty on Friday around noon.

"No you big silly!" she sent back. "It's going to be beautiful, and nice and cool with a slight cloud cover. You'll see!!!"

To know Patty Jensen is to know what optimism looks like...auburn haired with a bright, indomitable smile, a true believer. Wonderful attributes in a friend but not necessarily what you're looking for in a meteorologist.

But we pressed on in our cloud of doubt.

The Walk the Walk event is a fundraiser for the United Way, which has a campaign goal of $8 million dollars this year. That's a lot of dollars and organizers were worried that if the race washed out, so too would some of the contributions. With just a month to go in the campaign nobody wanted to fall behind, even by a small amount.

The theme of this year's campaign, which centers on Chatham Steel president Bert Tenenbaum (aka the "Man of Steel") is to "use your super powers for the good of the community." I thought it would take a heaping helping of super powers to salvage anything from Walk the Walk.

Around 4pm it came time to head to City Market where the race begins and I figured I'd check in with Dave Turley to gauge his dire-ometer.

"Look at the radar," Dave said pointing to one of the monitors in the SkyTrak Weather Center. "Nothing developing till later tonight and what's out there now looks like it's starting to dissipate."

At City Market, there were some sprinkles for just a few minutes as the blue sky began to overtake the gray.

At 6pm sharp the Man of Steel put the bullhorn to his mouth and sent over 200 runners dashing down Congress Street and over to Bull and then down around Forsyth Park and back again.

If you're keeping score, the overall men's winner was Leo Foley and the overall women's winner was Lysette Hunt. Their times were, respectively, crazy fast.

Following Leo and Lysette were a couple of hundred other determined folk who sprinted across the finish line to the cheers of gathered volunteers.

And then as the sky began its dark-blue transition to night just above City Market where the United Way race had been miraculously saved from the torrential weather, I realized that it was "beautiful and nice and cool with a slight cloud cover" just as I had been promised.

And there in that blue-drenched sky a rainbow provided a perfect exclamation mark to the power of people who use their super powers for the good of the community.

Reported by: Craig Harney, charney@wtoc.com