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By Sandra Baer, Contributing Writer 10:00 AM Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Tracey Morgan isn’t running for her life; she’s running for the lives of others.

Morgan organized the inaugural “Free to Breathe 5K Run and 1 Mile Walk” fundraiser sponsored by the National Lung Cancer Partnership last year and ran in the second annual event this year.

“It was the happiest time in my life when my mother came to live here,” said Morgan, whose parents moved to the area from Ashland, Ky., 10 years ago.

“My family was all together. Babies were everything to my mother and she thought I wouldn’t have any because I was an older mom. She moved two weeks before my older son, Evan, was born. But over the next year and a half to two years, she began developing signs of lung cancer. She died within seven to eight months after being diagnosed with incurable, inoperable lung cancer eight years ago.”

Morgan was born in Woodbridge, Va., where she lived until the age of 5. She moved to Ashland, Ky., after her father transferred his position in the post office so that the family could live closer to relatives in nearby West Virginia.

After graduating from Paul G. Blazer High School in 1980, Morgan worked and attended classes at Ashland Community College, where she was studying business. It was after transferring to Lexington Community College while on spring break in Myrtle Beach, S.C., that she met her husband, Daniel, a student at the University of Kentucky. The two eventually married in 1988 and moved to Bellbrook after Daniel, who currently works in IT for OmniCare in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, found a job in the area.

“I put myself through college, so I worked at different jobs,” said Morgan, who wanted to become a special education teacher, but studied business, marketing and computers first prior to changing majors at Wright State University.

“I wanted to be a special education teacher ever since I helped in a special education Sunday school class at church when I was a child.”

Morgan graduated from WSU in 1994 with a teaching degree in special education. She substitute taught in Bellbrook and Miamisburg for one year before being hired full time in Miamisburg where she was eventually named department chairwoman in special education in 1997.

She stopped working in 1999 to be at home with her children, Evan, 10, a student at Bellcreek Intermediate School, who studies karate and is in the fifth-grade choir, and Kasey, 5, who attends full-day kindergarten and studies dance at the Bellbrook Dance Academy.

“I was looking for some way to get motivated to run, and I wanted to honor my mother, so I decided to run for lung cancer,” said Morgan, who worked with Ray Olkfy to set up the initial run last year that had more than 100 runners participating.

“I typed ‘lung cancer’ and ‘running’ into the computer and came up with the National Lung Cancer Partnership. They didn’t have anything near here, so I decided to start one.”

This year, 157 runners, including three lung-cancer survivors, took part in the event that raises money for lung cancer advocacy and research.

“I’m grateful for my family, husband and children. And I’m grateful that when my mom was ill, I was able to be with her and care for her,” said Morgan, who is substitute teaching once again.

For more information about the National Lung Cancer Partnership, visit its Web site at: nationallungcancerpartnership.org.

Contact this columnist at (937) 432-9054 or jjbaer@aol.com.

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I am so grateful to have a niece like Tracey Morgan. I have made significant donations each year to honor my sister-in-law and also my first wife who also died of cancer, although my wife's was two massive brain tumors. God Bless all who donated to the National Lung Cancer Partnership.

Lyle Flowers
1:32 PM, 12/21/2009

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