Friends:   For the third year, I am going to be participating in Swim Across America (“SAA”), an event that raises money for cancer research, clinical trials and patient programs. For you cyclists, SAA is the swimming equivalent of Pelotonia. SAA was founded in 1987 and has since raised over $100M to fight cancer. SAA hosts a number of events across the U.S. each year – I will be swimming one mile in Lake Michigan at Ohio Beach in Chicago, IL on August 3, 2024, as part of TEAM RIEGER.

Cancer touches just about everyone in some way. The motivation for my participating in SAA is the direct impact it has had on our family.  We lost Donna’s father, Bob McLain, in 2011 (multiple myeloma), my sister-in-law, Jordana, in 2018 (colon/liver cancer), and most recently my younger brother Matt (who lived in Chicago) in October 2021 (pancreatic cancer) – all way too young. Both my father (colon) and I (melanoma) have also had issues with cancer in recent years, but in both instances, it fortunately was detected very early. There have been countless others that I know or have known who have been lost to or are battling cancer – HS and college classmates, siblings and parents of HS classmates, friends, clients, including several this past year.  My participation in SAA is to honor all those who have been lost to cancer and to support all those who are currently fighting cancer and to do my small part to hopefully help someday bring an end to cancer. 

Events like SAA do make a difference – 100% of every dollar raised goes directly to the fight against cancer. I hope you will consider supporting this effort in any way that you can.  Here is a link to my personal donation page:

https://www.swimacrossamerica.org/site/Donation2?12061.donation=form1&idb=1130587746&df_id=12061&FR_ID=7117&mfc_pref=T&PROXY_ID=1739956&PROXY_TYPE=20 – OR you can go to www.swimacrossamerica.org – DONATE and enter my name.

I know many of you support and are asked to support many charitable causes. Accordingly, I fully understand if you do not wish, or are not in a position, to support my effort. In any event, I appreciate your thought and consideration.

Thanks,

Thad

     Matt Rieger 5/21/71-10/27/21      Jordana Rae Rieger 5/6/73-4/20/18    Bob McLain 11/16/43-8/28/11