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With Tuesday night’s Paint the Town Pink kick-off, held in conjunction with the Austin Area Chamber of Commerce’s Business After Hours at The Hormel Institute, it’s important to realize not just the advances being made and being sought after, but also the character driving it all.

Year in and year out, benefits like PTTP, the Lyle Area Cancer Auction and the Blooming Prairie Cancer Auction have provided examples of the kind of giving required to help advance the nature of research and in turn the benefits of discovery.

Underlying it all is a vein of character that weaves throughout these efforts, defining each and every effort to raise money for cancer research.

The hurdle is simple if not frustrating. Available funding for research is tightly contested as scientists from all over the country vie for money from places like the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense.

It’s not something where the scientist can put together a plan of research, present it and get funding. It’s a far more complicated process.

That’s why these seed grants generated through Paint the Town Pink efforts are so important, because it affords Institute scientists the opportunity to put an early foot forward in an effort to gain a piece of available funding.

Seed grants allow the scientists opportunities to build concepts for research with hard and early data that gives those places being applied to a clearer look at what the scientist hopes to accomplish.

Further examples of character are the organizations devoting time and energy on any level to raise the necessary funds.

Largely, these efforts are volunteer-based meaning that individuals are taking time away from family and friends to dedicate their time to making events like Plunging for Pink happen.

Outside of PTTP, you have individuals devoting just as much time to make the long-heralded Lyle Area Cancer Auction and other such efforts a continuing success.

These wins are not done in a vacuum and what’s more, those who are putting in the work do it humbly. Everything is worth the results of what could be with the research that follows.

And finally, there is the character of the individual willing to dip into their pocket book and give of themselves for the betterment of this cause.

On Tuesday night, those in attendance heard the story of this year’s honorary chair, Breanna Bortner.

Stories like Breanna’s are becoming more and more frequent as research is developing strategies to further push back on cancer and that right there highlights what one person can do together with other like-minded people.

This research finds less purchase if people aren’t willing to give and donate. It starts with you.

We hope you take all of this into consideration this year and every other year of these worthy events, because if it weren’t for you:

The scientist.

The Organization.

The Individual.

If it weren’t for you, progress does not happen.

Let us leave you all with part of quote from one J.R.R. Tolkien’s most humble and bravest characters in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy — Samwise Gamgee.

“But in the end, it’s only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”