LEWISBURG — Bundled in long johns, jeans and leather jackets, motorcyclists will converge at the Country Cupboard Restaurant on New Year’s morning for the annual Polar Bear Ride.

The New Year’s Day ride, which can be termed a tradition after 15 years, is sponsored by the Lord’s Disciples Chapter of the Christian Motorcyclists Association. The event directs cash donations to some worthy person and canned goods and other food items to a local charity.

The 2009 ride will benefit Carol Flory, the local chapter’s secretary, who has been battling cancer and other misfortunes for the past year.

The week before Christmas, Flory and her husband, Bob, were getting ready for the club’s annual party.

“I felt humbled that they would consider honoring me this way,” she said. “It’s a good feeling that my friends felt they wanted to help us.”

Seated in the living room of her Sunbury home, with her husband and their dog Mack also on the couch, she talked about the trials of 2008.

“I can’t wait for this year to be over,” she said. “My father died in March, and two weeks after that, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.”

She went on to describe her treatment at Geisinger Medical Center, which included a regimen of chemotherapy and surgery.

“It played me out,” she admitted.

Most recently, she was hospitalized on Nov. 12 for additional surgery.

In addition to her health issues, her husband, a long-distance truck driver, wound up hospitalized as well. He contracted pneumonia while on the road and by the time he got home, was near collapse. He spent three weeks in the hospital suffering from organ failure.

As he recovered from that, surgeons had to remove his gall bladder.

“Through it all, friends from CMA visited him in the hospital,” Carol said. “They were very supportive.”

Carol hopes to return to her job at Sunbury Textile Mills, where she has worked for 30 years, and she hopes to see her grandchildren graduate and go to college.

Lenora Springfield, of Selinsgrove, outgoing president of the chapter, said Carol Flory’s 10 years as secretary have been a great help to her.