A Run For The Money

Nearly 20,000 runners begin the 26.2-mile Disney Marathon on a cold and cloudy January morning.

Velecia and Vickie Cooley are sisters-in-law and good friends running a race against time. The race is the annual Disney Marathon in Orlando. But they aren’t competing against each other – they are racing against time to save little five-year-old Dillon George.

The annual Walt Disney World Marathon attracts 20,000 runners and walkers from all over the world, many for the pleasure of participating and some for the joy of an important cause. For Felecia and Vickie Cooley, as well as their seven friends from Vero Beach who also participated this year, the cause was leukemia, and that cause was personified this year in little Dillon George of Orlando. “He was our ‘honorary coach,’”says Felecia, “the symbol of what we were racing for and racing against. Our team all wore wristbands with his name on them during training and the race itself, so he was never far from our thoughts.”

Read the entire article in the March 2002 issue