Elaine’s Walkers - Thrivent Financial for Lutherans member Elaine Balinski leads a small group of walkers who have contributed big things to the fight against multiple sclerosis.

by Sarah Asp Olson

Elaine Balinski is a firm believer in getting a move-on. The retired pediatric nurse from Quaker Town, Pennsylvania, has been walking for exercise for most of her life. Now, she gets others walking—for a cause.

Doctors suspected Balinski had multiple sclerosis as early as 1973, but at that time, medical technology was not sophisticated enough to diagnose her. So the disease lay dormant for two decades while Balinski went about her active life. Then, in 1992, she was on her way to work when she noticed gray spots in one eye. “By the end of my shift,” she says, “I was blind in that eye.”

After a formal diagnosis in 1992, Balinski began to feel the effects of MS in her daily life. But don’t think the disease has kept her inside—or sitting down. The spunky grandmother has walked in the Sellersville, Pennsylvania, charity walk, which supports the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, for years. Now she organizes the event.

Balinski first got involved in the annual walk by forming a small team with her husband, best friend and two daughters—they called themselves “Elaine’s Walkers.” By the end of their first walk, she knew the event would become her pet project.

“The first year [I participated], I could see things that needed to be different,” she says, “so I got on the planning committee.” The next year, 2000, snow made things difficult at the event, staged at an out-of-the-way walk site only accessible by winding back roads. So in 2001, Balinski suggested a new, more accessible site in Sellersville and took the reigns, organizing a crew of dedicated volunteers and hosting 220 walkers. By 2007, the number of walkers more than doubled and the event raised nearly $60,000 for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

But for Balinski, it’s not just about the numbers. “It makes me feel like I’m doing something to help me and others,” she says. “You don’t know what the future is going to be, and you just want to raise enough money to find a cause and a cure.”

This year, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans got in on the action by contributing $10,000 to all MS walks in the Delaware Valley region, which includes Sellersville.