The fight, the resilience, beating the odds.

Many in the group gathered at Zebulon Baptist Church Thursday night for the East Wake Relay For Life banquet have lived it.

The banquet is an event leading up to East Wake Relay for Life, a fundraiser held in towns and cities across the United States for the American Cancer Society.

It will be held May 16-17 at the Five County Stadium.

Dana Griswold, a Zebulon native, and the women and men sitting at the tables gave the fight a face.

“I have a different definition for goals since I became a cancer survivor,” said Griswold, who has lived 10 years and five months cancer free. Griswold said when she learned she had cervical cancer, she knew she couldn’t give up because her sons, Taylor and Tanner, needed her.

And her husband and the life they had built around their family, Wakefield Baptist Church and friends.

“I had to fight cancer,” she said. “I had no choice.”

Always a goal-maker, Griswold said her experience fighting cervical cancer gave her this insight: G is for putting God first, O is for putting others first, A is for attitude, and having a good one, L is for love -- “You accept all the love you can and give out as much as possible to everyone you meet,” she said — and S is for self.

She asked God to help her every day and said that he gave her strength, she said

She took care of herself by forming a cancer support group at Wakefield Baptist.

“We cry some,” she said. “But we laugh more than we cry.”

Griswold became involved with Relay after a friend was diagnosed with cancer.

“I remember saying to her, ‘You’re going to be fine with this, I know you,’” she said.

They walked around the track at the East Wake High School stadium, where past relays were held.

Little did she know that she would be walking as someone fighting cancer years later.

There are stories at each table. Ann Fagan told of being a breast cancer survivor. Gloria Turner survived two cancers.

Bruce Nelson is a survivor of pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed Sept. 24, 1999. “The good Lord is not ready to take me,” he said.

Adopted as a child, he’s grateful he was reunited with his birth family through the research of his wife, Faye, which seemed like a gift during his cancer ordeal.

Tracey Smith, the missions delivery manager for the American Cancer Society, said that more than 2,424 people were diagnosed with cancer in 2007 and 802 of them died.

“Having cancer is hard, but finding help shouldn’t be,” she said.

Smith’s job is to provide that help through an array of services — financial, emotional and educational.

“We are going to continue the fight until we find the cure,” said East Wake Relay Chair Dianna Scoggins. “Twenty years ago, we didn’t have as many survivors. Now we do.”