Starpoint '76 grad embarking on 4,300-mile Bike the US for MS ride
A Lockport native who's a lifelong cycling enthusiast will undertake her first cross-country ride as a member of the Bike the US for MS, Northern Tier Route team, beginning next week.
Darcy Whitsett, a 1976 graduate of Starpoint High School, said the 31-rider team will be in Lockport on June 20, staying overnight at Trinity Lutheran Church, and she'd appreciate it if, when they arrive in the city, they experience some fanfare.
'I am hoping to see hundreds of supporters wearing orange (the color of MS awareness) as we ride into Lockport,' Whitsett said.
A U.S. Navy veteran and longtime Virginia resident, Whitsett, 66, recently retired from Secrets In Lace, the lingerie company that she and her husband Dan founded 40 years ago. Retirement is what made her first cross-country bicycle trek possible.
'My whole family — five kids and our parents — were bike riders. I still remember us going to (Dick Cummings') Schwinn store downtown,' she said. 'When I was in college, I read about a cross-country ride, and I wanted to do it, but ... I couldn't fit it in with everything else in my life. I never let go of it, though.'
Bike the US for MS, Northern Tier Route is a 71-day, 4,295-mile trek through 15 states, starting in Bar Harbor, Maine, on June 6 and ending in Seattle, Washington, on Aug. 16. The team members are raising donations to cover assistive services for people managing multiple sclerosis and support research to find a cure for the neurological auto-immune disorder.
According to Whitsett, seven days of the trek will be given over to team service projects such as visiting MS support centers, assembling scooters, painting ramps and completing outdoor home improvement projects for people with MS who can no longer maintain their own home. Overnights mostly will be spent in tents and the team members are expected to feed themselves on their own dime.
While the cross-country opportunity is what drew Whitsett to sign up for the ride last July, the cause is not unfamiliar to her. Two dear friends from her childhood are battling MS today, she said, and the more she talks to people about the ride, the more people she's meeting who have the disease or know someone else who does.
From her friends and her own reading on the subject, Whitsett has learned: MS strikes all ages, moreso those over 40, and more women than men; the disease can go into remission and flare up; and it can affect people differently. She said her lifelong friend Tricia O'Connor Leydecker of Lockport was diagnosed with MS 20 years ago and presently is 'unstable' and using a cane.
Amongst the Northern Tier Route team members there is ongoing competition for the honor of raising the most money, and Whitsett has been at or near No. 1 consistently, having raised more than $12,000 herself since she signed up for the ride. When she slipped to the No. 2 position as of May 22, she vowed to get back to No. 1 while cheering on the team, which collectively had raised almost $200,000 to date on a $250,000 goal.
Whitsett has taken part in a few organized long-distance bike rides — Key Largo to Key West, Fla., and New York City to Philadelphia among them — but her approach to training for the much longer upcoming ride is pretty relaxed. She just rides her bike every day, she said. 'I was riding to work before I retired. … I'm just a consistent rider. Whether it's the grocery store, the bank, I just get on my bike and go.'
While she was in Lockport before Memorial Day, visiting her mom Elrena and her brothers Dennis Monroe and Larry Monroe, she hit the Erie Canalway Trail and biked to Medina and back, she said.
As for the desired fanfare when she returns to Lockport with the Bike the US for MS team, Whitsett said she doesn't know yet exactly where they'll enter (she's hoping it's by Old City Hall) but when she finds out she'll enlist friends and family here to share the location. She has been posting updates at Starpoint's Facebook page as well.
Donations and pledges to Whitsett can be made online at biketheusforms.org and via the QR code placed with this report.
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