Students Train to be Part of the Atlanta Marathon in Honor of Slain Classmate
In honor of the death of Clarenda McDonald, Spiritually Enlightened is sponsoring a movement to take part in the Atlanta Marathon on Sunday, May 17th. They plan to run in the Marathon that is 26.2 miles around the city of Atlanta. For each mile this group of ten students from Clark Atlanta completes, they are petitioning the public to donate money to the Clarenda McDonald Memorial Scholarship Fund Endowment.
Based on the amount of preparation that has gone into running this race, it is pretty obvious that Clarenda was loved and cared for by her peers. John Wilson, a sophomore in Spiritually Enlightened and a former good friend of Clarenda, has been training for the last six weeks for this one event. He is doing this for no other reason than out of love for Clarenda. Wilson states “I have never worked this hard for something in my life, especially when it comes to exercise. But the tragedy of Clarenda being killed in that senseless accident gave me an impetus to improve my life, and hopefully affect someone else for the better.”
Training for the marathon is only one area in which Spiritually Enlightened is putting a high level of effort into. Each member of the team wants nothing but success for the endowment effort. Leslie Lewis, one of Clarenda’s closest friends, says the scholarship must be a success, because it is the least that Clarenda deserves. Lewis says “She was such a model student, model worker, and a model woman. People should donate to her scholarship fund, because the better we do at keeping her legacy alive, the better off the world will be.”
The scholarship fund needs the support of the general public throughout the Atlanta area. The goal is for people to donate $15, $25, $50, or $100 for each mile completed by this group of 10 students. Advertisements are on flyers across the city with information about Clarenda and the Marathon. The students of Spiritually Enlightened want to remind everyone that even though this is a challenging task they have taken on, they feel that it is the least they can do for a life that was so tragically and unwarrantedly taken away from them. Clarenda had so much to live for, and now they want to give back at least a portion of the impact she had on their lives.
