By J1 Reporter Ava Ellis

Walk-A-Thon has always been a cherished event in Marian’s community. Each year hundreds of thousands of dollars are collected to support tuition assistance. 

Taking a walk down memory lane Assistant Financial Director of tuition assistance, Mrs. Shari Reynolds, reflected back to the time before online donations. “Back then, it was all cash and checks, it would take us all day to count,” Reynolds said.

Still today the business and advancement staff members count all of the cash and checks from WAT, but it takes less time. Before online donating was introduced, they “started by 9 a.m. to count. We would be lucky if we were done by 4 o’clock.” Now it takes the business advancement staff around an hour or two to count the actual cash and checks brought in. 

Continuing the WAT down memory lane Reynolds tells about Mr. Bruce Esser and his famous WAT donation scheme. Esser, a physics teacher who taught at Marian for 20 years, started a tradition in 1992 that left his students in a race to get to him. 

In Esser’s first year at Marian he decided he would take five $20 bills and put them up on the bulletin board in his room and see how long it would take for students to notice. He put them there for his students to ask him for money for WAT. The problem was, nobody asked him why the bills were there. 

The next year Esser decided to better his tradition. The day of the WAT kickoff block he put a $100 bill in his pocket and kept it there until the first student asked him for a donation. The first student to ask him for a donation would get the $100 bill to donate. This tradition was carried out every year until Esser’s retirement in 2013. 

History has shown how important and exciting Walk-A-Thon can be for Marian girls. In the end, students raise money to go towards their peers’ education and it shows the community and spirit of Marian.