BRUNSWICK — Pedro O’Hara’s restaurant and pub plans to host Relay For Life Night at its 115 Maine St. restaurant Friday.

Relay for Life Night will run from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. In addition to the regular menu, a special Relay For Life menu will be available featuring at least four items — “something for everyone,” owner Troy Kavanaugh said last week before the menu had been finalized.

For those special menu items, 20 percent of the bill will go to Relay For Life, a major fundraiser for the American Cancer Society.

Pedro O’Hara’s restaurant, offering Irish, Mexican and American cuisine, has been in its current location for almost 11 years.

Owners Troy and Shelby Kavanaugh’s willingness to host Relay For Life Night and donate a portion of its proceeds to the cause, illustrates the importance of this year’s Relay For Life theme, which is “ community,” a release from the local chapter of the American Cancer Society states.

The 2012 Relay For Life of Brunswick is scheduled for May 18 at Brunswick High School.

The money raised at Relay For Life funds cancer research, early detection and prevention education and patient services. Relay for Life also allows every person in the community the chance to celebrate the lives of those who have survived cancer, remember those who have been lost to the disease, and to fight back. With every step every participant at relay makes, “ we’re fighting for every birthday threatened by every cancer in every community,” states the American Cancer Society.

Troy Kavanaugh said he always wanted to do something to help Relay For Life, but over the past year he was personally affected by cancer as a close family friend, Cam Vermette of Topsham, a Mt. Ararat High School graduate and student at Florida State, battled Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Kavanaugh called Vermette a scholar-athlete with a 4.0 grade point average at college. Instead of heading to Panama for his spring semester abroad, Vermette has been receiving treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Kavanaugh said. He’s been friends with Vermette’s father since they were 18.

“It just opened my eyes to the fact that it can happen to even the youngest and strongest,” Kavanaugh said, adding that this is what really pushed him to get involved.

When Irene Dubreuil, chairwoman of this year’s Relay for Life of Brunswick, sat down with him to talk about how he could support Relay For Life, Kavanaugh said, “Hey, why don’t we just do a night here, and get people in? I hope they’re standing outside the door to come in that night to help raise money.”

Pedro O’Hara’s will have a team participating in the Relay for Life, and Kavanaugh said other folks can come in Friday night and register their company or restaurants as relay participants.

Members of the Relay For Life committee be on hand to register teams, and accept donations. They also will have some special commemorative Relay For Life 2012 items for sale.

“We ask each person to raise $ 100. To me, this is a way our committee can help raise money to help with the costs of putting on the relay,” Dubreuil said.

The less money that goes to putting on the event, the more that goes directly to cancer research or to help those fighting cancer, she said.

“We are so grateful to Pedro’s for their generous support of the Relay For Life of Brunswick,” said Donna Muto, community executive for the American Cancer Society. “This event proves local businesses stand shoulder to- shoulder with residents in the Bath/Brunswick area in a true sense of community that supports the American Cancer Society’s mission of helping people affected by cancer.”

More information and registration materials for Relay For Life of Brunswick can be found online at www.relayforlife.org/brunswickme.

dmoore@timesrecord.com

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