By Andy Dahn

BLOOMINGTON – Saturday’s 38th annual St. Jude Telethon raised a grand total of $9,135,393, up from $8.3 million last year.

Co-coordinator of the St. Jude Bloomington runners Dennis Cler said the runners that began their journey at Eastland Mall raised $215,000.

“We’re very happy with that and very proud of all of the effort that our runners put forth,” Cler said. “We always talk about the running and how many miles people are running and things like that, but we always stress that it’s a fundraising event. The most important you get isn’t how many miles you run, it’s how many dollars you raise. That’s what we’re all about.”

More than 150 runners made the trip from Bloomington to Peoria. Cler said he saw something special in his Bloomington group.

“This year, we had a group of about 20 teenagers who ran with us,” said Cler. “They went out and raised money and they got at it and wrote letters to family and friends and had fundraising activities and things like that. That’s always great to see because they’re going to hopefully be the folks that are going to carry this on into the future for as long as we have to be doing this.”

Cler said the community came together and helped make the event possible.

“To everybody who helped support our St. Jude runners, we certainly appreciate it,” Cler said. “Everybody that wrote out a check or dropped some change in a bucket or anything like that. We really appreciate it.”

All runners combined to raise over 4.5 million dollars for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Andy Dahn can be reached at [email protected].