Paint the Community Purple event to be held

Lockport — The color purple will once again be decorating Lockport in the next few weeks, as the area prepares for the annual Relay For Life event.

As part of that, Paint the Community Purple will begin Friday, with local businesses using the color purple and this year’s theme “Hoedown for Hope.”

Event co-chair Kristen Allen said their hope is that they can “stomp out cancer” or “round-up cancer,” which is why this year’s theme was picked.

“Every year we try to pick a fun theme that Relay teams can have fun with,” said Allen. “We will see businesses on Friday try to tie this western theme into the purple theme and you would be pretty amazed at what people can come up with.”

Last year’s theme focused on Hollywood, so Allen said many decorated with lots of stars, film reels and famous movie actors and actress cutouts. This year, she expects there will be cowboys, horses, saddles, lassos and boots.

Allen said then for Relay For Life, there will be all sorts of western ideas too. Teams will come dressed in costumes, decorate their tents with cowboy ideas and tie the theme into their on-site fund-raiser.

“We are excited to see how creative businesses are and what they come up with,” said Allen. “It is just such a great community event and we are excited to be a part of it.”

For this year, Paint the Community Purple will continue like years past, but it has expanded, including businesses throughout the downtown area. Businesses will be judged based on creativity, use of color and use of theme.

“We are so lucky that more and more businesses support this cause and want to get involved,” said Allen. “This event shows us that together, as a community, we are united in fighting cancer. Purple is the color that represents all cancers, not one in particular. So, by ‘painting’ your business purple for one day you are showing that you too, are in the fight against cancer. That together, Lockport is working towards a cure for all cancer.”

Several local schools will also participate in the Paint the Schools Purple event, taking place on Thursday

“It is great to see the kids so involved in the fight against cancer,” said Allen. “They really do a nice job in decorating their school purple.”

The Relay For Life event is through the American Cancer Society. The event will be held on June 16, at Emmet Belknap Middle School.

Allen is event co-chair with Amanda Gueli.