Imagine, crossing over Park Avenue in Worcester, up the slight incline on Salisbury Street. You have just biked more than 3,500 miles in 50 days and you are riding high. Slightly waning spirits are revived with a sign that says, "YOU CAN DO IT! ONLY 1 MORE MILE TO GO." As you peddle with the supporters, family, and friends who have met you, you think back over the last six weeks. "How did I ever accomplish this goal?"
No one can possibly comprehend what Ann McCarron, our director of Recreational Sports, was feeling on Tuesday, September 15, 1998, at 3:55 p.m. as she turned the corner from Salisbury Street onto the Assumption College campus. She had just biked from San Diego, CA to Worcester, MA to raise awareness of and money for child sexual abuse. She arrived home, exactly on time, to a cheering crowd of more than 800 faculty, staff, and students. She was escorted onto campus by Massachusetts state police officers and Worcester police bike patrols as she rode past the hundreds of well-wishers who had come out to line the campus road like a parade route.
Tooting horns, noisemakers, and many homemade signs all greeted the emotional McCarron. But, the crescendo came as she turned the corner in front of the Hagan Campus Center to Michael Bolton's "A Hero's Welcome" blaring from the loudspeakers. She truly is a hero and certainly received a hero's welcome from Assumption College.