The Five Points of Life Race Weekend is Feb. 15-16, and for Doug Marken, wife Barbara, granddaughter Jada and the rest of the family, the ties to Gainesville’s biggest running event are many.
“It’s always fun and I look forward to running with Papa,” Jada, a sixth grader at Westwood Middle School says, glancing at her grandfather Doug.
It was Jada who helped turn Doug into a runner at age 55. He still recalls that hot, humid July morning three years ago when he decided to give it a try. A swimmer and tennis player at Wittenberg University, he’d been active, but never a runner.
“I don’t think I made it half a block,” he said, shaking his head. “I defined it as a near-death experience.”
But with the help of his running buddy, he kept it up. Jada opens a photo album to a finish line photo at the Tipple’s Beer Run. She was 8 and barely chest high. Many finish lines later, she reaches Doug’s shoulders and they’re still hitting the road.
“I run for time with my granddaughter, I don’t run to beat a time,” Doug said.
Running the Five Points weekend started when Doug joined Jada for the kids marathon, and now they’ve graduated to the 5Points 5K. Doug says it’s different from other local races.
“Standing at the starting line, you get to meet people from all over the state,” he said.
Like other races, there’s a cause behind it, and there the Marken family has another personal connection. LifeSouth Community Blood Centers and the Five Points of Life Foundation created the weekend with the goal of raising awareness of five ways to share life with others through donation. By donating blood, platelets by apheresis, volunteering as a marrow donor, signing an organ donor card, or with parents donating the umbilical cord blood of a newborn, lives can be saved.
Barbara Marken is living proof that a person doesn’t need to die to be an organ donor. Back in October of 1995 she donated a kidney to 12-year-old Derek Doyle, a friend of the family from their days living near Minneapolis.
Barbara said the first time she ever met Derek she had a gut feeling that she could be the matching kidney donor who could change his life. He was tiny boy who had already experienced two failed transplant attempts. At that time, a transplant from a non-related living donor was nearly unheard of. But still, she couldn’t deny that feeling.
In 1994, after the Markens had moved to Richmond, Ind., Barbara opened a Christmas card from Derek’s family. In addition to the holiday greeting the card carried the plea for a possible kidney donor. Multiple medical tests later, Barbara’s initial hunch was confirmed. She was a perfect match. She became the first unrelated adult to child living kidney donor ever at the University of Minnesota Hospital.
Derek would live to graduate high school and college before his death at the age of 26 of spinal meningitis, totally unrelated to the kidney transplant. And while the kidney went to Derek, Barbara realized the other gift was the 14 years she’d given Derek’s parents, Kathi and Donnie Doyle, who got see their only son grow up. It’s an opportunity others have as well.
“I don’t think the general public knows how easy it is to do,” Barbara said.
The Markens share one other Five Points connection. The family, through their business, Marken-Sario Group at Morgan Stanley, staffs the water station at the 11-mile-mark for Sunday’s marathon and half marathon. Doug, Barbara, daughters Kristen Sario and Erin Marken, even Jada, are filling cups with water before most of Gainesville is awake, preparing for the onslaught of nearly 1,000 runners. Doug is also a volunteer member of the race committee, which was an eye opener on what it takes to stage a race over 26 miles of city and University of Florida streets.
“It’s amazing what goes into the race,” he said. “It really promotes Gainesville.”