It turned up on Twitter a few nights ago – a curiosity-piquing tweet about a West Seattle 8-year-old raising money to help wildlife. We saw it and followed the link, which led to the tale of Clayton Drennan. His mom Kathleen agreed to share his story – and that photo, which she says was taken last Friday, as he “clos(ed) in on mile 15 … At this point he’d already walked nearly four miles that day.”
About a month ago, Clayton announced to us that he wanted to try to complete the Seattle Children’s Kids Marathon. Since then, much to our surprise, he’s been cheerfully running and walking laps on our block, taking the lead on long walks to the park (including one four-miler that took us on an odyssey around West Seattle), often pushing his little brother Joey in the jogging stroller. Once we saw how serious he was about it, we told him about how lots of people raise money for worthy causes by taking on similar challenges. This piqued his interest.
Considering what an animal lover he is, I immediately thought of the work that Conservation Northwest is doing to protect wildlife habitat in Washington and told him about how I’d seen a slideshow describing their work with the I-90 Wildlife Bridges Coalition. When I described how the proposed and planned bridges and underpasses will save the lives of animals and people, too, he insisted that Conservation Northwest was the charity for him. He didn’t even want to hear about other options.
Clayton typed and dictated most of the blog content himself; his dad and I just edited a bit and added details where they were needed. Readers should go there to find out more about how they can donate and how he’s hoping to triple any donations that come in.
Charity fundraising aside, he is just excited to tackle the challenge of running the last 1.2 miles of the race (which he’ll do with me, his dad, his 9-year-old friend Allison, and a gaggle of other kids on November 27th). He plans to train at 6:30 a.m. every morning for the next week or so with Allison and his Dad until race day.
We hope that folks around West Seattle will visit the blog, leave encouraging comments, maybe even make a donation in Clayton’s honor, and help our eight-year-old learn how one small person can make a big difference.
Again, Clayton’s website is here – with a donation link toward the bottom (you can leave those encouraging comments on his site too).
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