Twenty four-year-old Kimberly Elphick of Secaucus has never run in a marathon before. In fact, when she graduated from Secaucus high school in 1994, the sport she had taken up was volleyball, not track. But on Nov. 5, she will be running the 26.2 miles of the New York Marathon, hoping to raise money to help her uncle who is currently waiting to get a liver transplant.
John Crimmins, a 40-year-old former resident of Hoboken and a Navy veteran, has been diagnosed with the incurable Hepatitis C.
“He needs a liver transplant,” Elphick said, noting that the man is currently on an extensive waiting list that may eventually result in his receiving a donated liver, but that he cannot afford many of the medications he needs during the interim and drugs he may need after the operation.
“We’re hoping a liver will be available within six months,” Elphick said. “But the medication costs a lot of money and most it isn’t covered by his medical benefits.”
Crimmins is currently receiving dialysis treatments at a veteran’s hospital in northern New Jersey, leaving him little time or strength to work.
Crimmins had worked in marinas on boats and apparently carried over his love of boats when he enlisted in the Navy years earlier.
“He’s always been around boats,” Elphick said. “He was also a fisherman.”
Elphick heard about her uncle’s plight about a year ago. She and her uncle had been pretty close over the years and she felt she would like to do something to help. She contributed her own money but also thought she would do a fundraiser. This was just after the 1999 New York Marathon, and she thought, why not run in the marathon?
She could have given a number of reasons against the idea.
Although a personal trainer for Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, Elphick had taken up volleyball in high school and college, not track. Volleyball is the kind of sport where the physical exertion comes in spurts, a stop-and-go type action that differs sharply from the steady physical endurance needed for a 26-mile run.
“A marathon takes a physical and mental ability to overcome, but so does sickness,” she said. “I thought they were metaphorically comparable. I thought this was be something of a reach for me to successfully complete, since I’m not a runner.”
Since then, she’s spent nearly a year in training, building up to run five miles a day, six days a week though a program in the New York Roadrunners Club.
“It was horrible when I first started,” she admitted. “I had no endurance. It was a complete shift from the kind of things I was used to doing.”
Signing up for the marathon was nearly as difficult as the training. She had to apply to get in. This meant getting on a line at 97th Street in Central Park to go to a sign up table located 30 blocks downtown on 67th Street. She was lucky, as she was one of the 30,000 people accepted out of 100,000 that applied.
“I was picked by lottery since I had no previous standing,” she said. “I was lucky, or maybe this was just meant to be.”
Meanwhile Elphick has been seeking people to sponsor the run, paying her a pre-promised amount for each mile. She has set a goal of raising $3,000 from the event.
“People can give whatever they want, maybe a $1 per mile,” she said.
Seeking people to sponsor her, Elphick has sent out over 200 letters to friends and family. The cause seems to have caught on.
“People have been making copies and sending the letter to other people,” she said, noting that she has received responses from as far away as South Jersey, Pennsylvania and Syracuse, N.Y. She has also received moral support from her immediate family. Her father and mother, who also live in Secaucus, will be at the November race to cheer her on.
“I think anything is possible,” she said. “That’s why I’m taking my uncle’s message to other people.” Anyone wishing to sponsor Elphick can make checks to John D. Crimmins and mail them c/o Transplant Fund, PO Box 1147, Secaucus, NJ 07096-1147. For more information, call (212) 436-6215 or email Elphick at kimvball@hotmail.com.