Weekend after next, eastern Wake residents and their neighbors from Johnston, Franklin and Nash Counties will gather at Five County Stadium for what has become an annual gathering.

Of course I’m referring to Relay For Life, which takes place this year May 22-23. Organizers took a punch to the stomach last year when Wake County Schools officials decided to enforce rules that essentially forced the event off the East Wake High School campus where it had been staged for years.

Last year’s event moved rather seamlessly to Five County, but rain dampened the event and turned it into a bit of a slog — albeit a fun slog.

There’s no way I’d try to guess what the weather will bring this year, but I can tell you there will be hundreds of people walking and working to raise money for the American Cancer Society to benefit cancer research and other programs that help people battling cancer and their families.

Goodness only knows how many people have died from cancer over the years.

Many of them are nameless, faceless people to most of us. To their families, though, cancer is most dastardly thing ever wrought upon the people of this earth.

But not everyone is a nameless, faceless victim.

Consider Gary Dixon.

Gary is the Career Development Counselor at East Wake High School and my friend.

He is in the late stages of cancer. He has battled for the better part of two years, undergoing radiation and chemotherapy.

At one point, it looked like Gary had beaten the dreaded disease. Then it returned with a vengeance.

As I sat at a meeting of the East Wake Business Alliance recently, I watched as people updated the group on Gary’s condition. Tears flowed freely. Words were hard to come by. Gary means a lot to the people who sat around that table.

Over his career, Gary was first a teacher. He impacted children directly in that role before he became a program director.

Even in that post, though, he has always focused on children, working to put students and working professionals in touch with each other.

Gary visited the East Wake campus a couple weeks ago and I got to spend a little time visiting with him. He is on a lot of pain medication, but he was able to chat with a smile and greet the steady stream of visitors who stopped by.

Gary has made peace with his impending death. He is braver than I could ever be.

He has two sweet children, a son in middle school and a daughter in high school. He will miss many of their life’s milestones. And they will miss having him there.

The money this community helps raise won’t save Gary Dixon’s life. But it will help save someone.

And every time you give money to a group helping raise funds for Relay For Life, you’ll be able to do it without thinking of cancer in a nameless, faceless sort of way.

Cancer has a name. It has thousands of names. Millions.

Gary Dixon is one of them. He will leave us too soon. We will be better for the fact that he passed through eastern Wake County.

We would be so much better off, though, if cancer research found a cure to help the Gary Dixons of our community.

Then we could give cancer a new name: Vanquished.