Tim Crunk loved helping people and he loved to run in his spare time to stay in shape.

Combined with those two things, he also had a passion for working with Cedarcrest Church in Acworth. Before he died this past summer at 52, he took two mission trips with his wife, Leslie, to Haiti, specifically to a community called Chadirac.

While there, the longtime coach, administrator and athletic director — who served Cobb County for 28 years at Kennesaw Mountain, Sprayberry and South Cobb — saw how little the community had in the way of education for its youth.

“We’ve been able to go twice through our church,” Leslie Crunk said. “And when we came home after our first trip, we just had a real strong feeling like God would guide where we need to be. Since (Tim) was in education, and I had a background in counseling, we just felt like we might be able to walk along the side of (Chadirac) and figure out how to help them to be able to start some type of an education program.

“This community does not really have any type of an education program. It’s a very rural, agricultural program. The adults and children have just the minimum to no reading ability. Some of them can write their name, and so you just sort of brainstorm that, if we were able to do a race, that might be a way to sort of help start something.”

In that vein, the Tim Crunk Memorial 5K walk/run is being held as a way to raise money for learning materials for the Chadirac community, a goal that he had set out to accomplish before his death.

“(Tim) has been an educator for years and wanted to make it his life goal to bring education to Haiti,” said Brett Harrison, missions pastor at Cedarcrest Church. “And he and his wife have come to me and had dinner with my wife and were going to move there next summer. And he died 24 hours later, after that conversation.

“He had this run scheduled and planned to get people interested in Haiti education, so I made it my mission to make it happen.”

The race will occur October 13 at 8 a.m. starting a the Cedarcrest Church property at Cobb Parkway and Cedarcrest Road. The cost to enter is $25, though proceeds from the race will be put into the Haiti Education Fund. According to the race website, the fund has currently raised $3,100.

“Tim has been a coach for most all of his life,” Harrison said. “He was an active runner, ran all of his life. …He was passionate about running and knew that he could get a lot of people to run. He was very well connected with Sprayberry and Kennesaw Mountain. He was an administrator and coach at both of them. He just had a passion for running. We knew that this might be a great opportunity to do it.”

Outside of wanting to educate children in Cobb County and stay in shape, Tim Crunk was described as selfless, a person that cared about his community and about helping people in need.

“He was probably the most selfless person I knew,” Harrison said. “He always put others before himself and put those who were less fortunate ahead of himself. He cared about giving to people, and in particular students that didn’t have an opportunity. He was going to get something done if it needed to get done.”