DATE: Saturday, October 4, 1997             TAG: 9710040565

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   54 lines

WALK THE DOG FOR SPCA IN GHENT TODAY

If you'd like to take a stroll today, a diverting walk gets under way at noon in Ghent for the Norfolk SPCA. Registration begins at 11 a.m. at The Hague.

If you arrive a trifle late, no reason you can't just fall in. The line of march, I mean, not The Hague.

How startling to realize this is the 16th annual Dog Walk. Try something once around here and it takes on a life of its own.

Any of the local SPCAs merit support. All seem understaffed, overburdened. All are dedicated. You must love animals dearly to put up with the heartache of trying to help them when they are abandoned or otherwise in distress.

The walkers turn in money they have collected from sponsors at so much per mile. Those raising the most win prizes, such as T-shirts. The biggest fund-raiser's dog will be crowned Top Dog of 1997.

Festivities include face painting (for children), clowns, hot dog bobbing (for dogs) and treats for the family. The Norfolk SPCA has been rescuing animals since 1892.

Today's walk will offer music from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. by the Anchant Lizzardz, so named to drive this paper's copy editors wild.

When lead singer Scott Ward puts down the mike, he is a management consultant at Fort Monroe. Bob Gomez, with banjo and guitar, is a pediatrician at Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters.

Mark Elder, on fiddle, banjo and Conga drums, is a mechanical engineer. Trombonist Mark Elliott teaches biochemistry at Old Dominion University. Edward Lazaron, who plays guitar and harmonica, is an architect. Drummer Scott Stubbe teaches English and coaches baseball at Tallwood High School.

Doug Giles runs the sound system and teaches science at Booker T. Washington High School.

This aggregation of dads plays rock and roll, bluegrass, blues, soul music, Cole Porter and reggae.

Their name originated when one dad remarked three years ago, ``We're just a bunch of crusty old lizards with guitars.''

Everywhere you look these days, people are walking for an endless variety of causes.

The parade began when President Franklin Roosevelt created the March of Dimes in 1936. The dimes were walking for children afflicted with infantile paralysis.

By 1960, talkathons reached television, raising millions. Then came the Mothers March, canvassing door to door for donations. In 1960, adding birth defects and juvenile arthritis to its foes, the crusade became the New March of Dimes.

In the late 1960s, multitudes began walking 15.5 miles from 17th Street at Virginia Beach to Fort Monroe, raising upward of $500,000 in pledges.

Now, it seems, everybody is in the act, all to lend a healing touch.

FDR's idea had legs.

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