Letter to the Editor: Support Day and Time Change for Brooksie Way

Dear Editor,

Thank you for your recent article informing us of the date change for the upcoming Brooksie Way Half Marathon 2012.

In recent years the Brooksie Way Half Marathon has been held on Sunday mornings as it is again this year on Sunday, Sept. 30. This causes great hardship to the thousands of residents in Rochester Hills who have historically
chosen to worship God on the Sabbath. We have expressed this concern in the past directly to event organizers in the same manner we have with organizers of various athletic programs that schedule games or practices on Sunday mornings. It is our expressed attempt to keep sacred our Sunday Sabbath which, in turn, by our communal prayer and worship calls us to respond to many wonderful charitable causes such as the Brooksie Way.

The rolling traffic blockages create great inconvenience to worshippers who are unable to leave their neighborhoods due to main street closings. As you can see from their website traffic instructions, the re-routing instructions are difficult to decipher even to the most ardent traveler: (http://www.thebrooksieway.com/Pages/race/traffic.aspx). Still in some cases, entire subdivision exits are blocked keeping traffic from entering or exiting for several hours.

For these reasons we are unable to support their Sunday morning efforts and request our community to support an effort to ask the organizers to move the event to a more suitable timeframe or day.

Sincerely,

Fr. Jerome A. Brzezinski, Pastor, St. John Fisher Parish, Auburn Hills

Send letters to the editor to editor Kristin Bull at kristin.bull@patch.com