District 300 Relay for Life Team Raises Thousands of Dollars for Cancer Research

Joan Steenhausen was the “Queen Bee” of the speech-language pathologist department at the deLacey Family Education Center in Carpentersville.

Steenhausen died last October from a rare cancer.

Her memory will be with her “worker bees” as a Relay for Life team from deLacey Center, called the Queen’s Bees, raises money for cancer research in the Relay for Life School District 300.

“She was awesome,” Queen’s Bees leader Megan Tracy said of Steenhausen. “I don’t feel like my words can explain. She was a really great person. As a supervisor, she was always there for any of us who needed help. She really impacted a lot of people.”

The Community School District 300 Relay for Life will be held from 6 p.m. Friday, April 19 to early Saturday, April 20 at Hampshire High School, 1600 Big Timber Road.

The Queens Bees raised $12,700 so far, Tracy said. Last year, the team raised $6,000. Overall, Relay For Life of School District 300 has raised $64,435, according to the American Cancer Society's website.

“We did the relay last year and we knew we were going to do it this year so we started funding in October,” she said. “We really picked it up in the beginning of the year.”

Steenhausen’s death brought the whole school together with many people joining the team and even more donating, Tracy said.

There’s another reason Tracy participates. She lost her mother, Laura, in 2010, to a rare form of bone cancer. Tracy and her sister, Allison Cass, co-captain Laura’s Fighters, a team that participates in the Kane County Relay for Life held in June in Geneva.

“I think the only way I really know how to fight back against cancer is participate in these Relays for Life,” Tracy said. “I can’t let it win, it’s taken too many people away from me.”

Donations are still being taken on the Relay for Life website. To make a donation for Queen’s Bees, go to the website and select the team.