At 6 p.m. on Oct. 8, the day of Chicago’s marathon, Oak Park’s Lake Theatre is showing Go On, Be Brave, a documentary that celebrates the story of Andrea Peet, a marathon veteran. It is a powerful message to raise awareness for ALS as well as a fundraiser to help end the disease.
Representatives of Andrea’s foundation have asked me to help promote the movie at The Lake because they know how much my wife Anne and our family and I appreciate the support we received, and continue to receive, from so many people in our communities and through Wednesday Journal.
Andrea was diagnosed with ALS in 2014 at the age of 33. In 2019, she set her mind to doing a marathon in all 50 states using her recumbent bike. She completed that goal in 2022. Visit youtube.com, then write in the subject box “drea peet canva” and click on “How Nonprofits Inspire” to see a video of Andrea so you can get a feeling for what remarkable people she and her husband David are. It is even better, I think, than the movie trailer for that purpose.
Our daughter Sarah also lived with ALS before her passing five years ago. I sent some questions to Andrea in preparing this piece and wondered if she had ever met Sarah. This is her response:
“I worshipped Sarah and got to meet her on a couple of occasions, including a trip to her house where I watched [her daughter] Scarlett make pink mudpies!”
In her final state of the fifty, Alaska, Andrea dedicated each mile to a member of the ALS community. Mile 10 was for Sarah.
After completing 50 states, Andrea still races. Why?
“Sarah was diagnosed about a year before me and I admired her immensely—her brilliance, her writing, her ability to make people understand and care about ALS was so inspiring to me as I figured out my own journey. Now I race for her and the other friends we’ve lost to this wretched disease. As long as I’m alive, my mission is to help fund treatments and research so that other families don’t have to go through ALS.”
Andrea will not race in Chicago (they won’t allow her recumbent bike), but she will be at the Lake Theatre on the 8th. You can go to her website, www.teamdrea.org, and click on “Documentary” to buy tickets to the movie ($9 each) or click on “Donate.”
Joe and Ann Coglianese are longtime Oak Park residents and dedicated advocates for a cure for ALS.