Idea Gains Traction as First-Time Car Show Revs Up in Panhandle by April Brownlee Photos courtesy of April Hendrick Photography “I had the notion there was something more I could do,” said LaDawn Baten, a 2011 Walk MS top fundraiser for the National MS Society’s Amarillo office. Long before reaching top fundraiser status, LaDawn was your average Walk MS participant. For years, she walked because someone close to her lives with MS. She walked with her employer’s team. She raised what she could. Then, in December 2010, LaDawn was diagnosed with MS. Suddenly, she found herself wanting to take it all to another level. “Prior to me being diagnosed, I walked for my aunt, and I knew bits and pieces of what she went through so I just did it in support of her. But I think, overall, it was being diagnosed and knowing there’s no
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MSConnection • WINTER 2012
cure,” she said. LaDawn refocused her fundraising efforts for Walk MS 2011, scoring almost $2,000 for the cause – enough to rank her among the Top 10 fundraisers for Walk MS events in the Texas Panhandle. But it wasn’t enough for LaDawn; she and her husband, Earnie, conspired to do something bigger. “My husband came up with the idea. He’s an avid car enthusiast. He is building his first car he had in high school, which is a ‘67 rally sport Camaro. So he said, ‘Why not have a car show in Dumas?’ He thought we could get a good turnout,” LaDawn said. In August, hundreds of people flocked to LaDawn’s “DreaMS of A Cure” car show in her hometown of Dumas, a small community in the northeastern Texas