Time and Place: Wage Hope

? “Wage Hope.” Two simple words that mean so much to so many people, myself included. A mantra, if you will.
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? Hundreds of people gathered at Centennial Olympic Park on Saturday wearing purple. Shirts, tutus, pants, painted faces, dyed hair, socks, even mustaches. All purple and all in remembrance of someone special. The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network was holding its annual PurpleStride Atlanta 5k that started at the park and wound 3.1 miles through Downtown. Families and friends laughed, cried, smiled, and told stories about their loved ones as they moved through the gates and out onto the streets to walk and raise money for pancreatic cancer research.
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? I wasn’t just there to take photos of the event. I was a participant. I have lost both my father-in-law Jerry Kelley and Angelina Hamlet, a woman who I considered my second mother, to this terrible disease. It’s hard to diagnose and it doesn’t play fair. The mortality rate is extremely high and the cancer moves quickly throughout the body. It is usually a death sentence. Instead of showing the tears involved with Saturday I wanted to show the hope. That’s why I picked this image. The smiles, the pictures of fathers, mothers, and friends, the purple everywhere — they all embody the walk and everything about the those two little words “Wage Hope.”