For years, Micki Mangum has gone to ball games to cheer her siblings. Monday night in St. George, with the Olympic torch sitting on the left side of her wheelchair, she was given her much-deserved chance to be the one who was cheered like a hero.
"This is the one thing no one else gets to do and we're all here to cheer her on," said Mangum's mother, Patricia.
"She's always been the cheerleader for everyone else," she said. "People have been calling all day to find out where her run was going to be."
Micki Mangum has a degenerative neurological disease that has left her small body frail and unable to walk and took away her power of speech.
She also has about nine seizures a day.
Micki's two younger sisters, Lisa Mangum and Jenny Cloward, who nominated her for the torch relay, said their sister is resilient, though, and when they heard about people being nominated to run the torch, they knew they had to nominate her.
"It's hard to be depressed with Micki around," Lisa Mangum said. "She's a fighter. She's been in and out of hospitals and can't walk or talk, but she is always very patient."
Patricia Mangum said Micki has been getting excited for the run. "Whenever she sees the torch on TV she raises her arm."
The flame came to a stop Monday night in St. George at a community celebration outside of Red Cliffs Mall.
Although the torch was more than an hour behind schedule, 15,000 people stayed seated in lawn chairs to see former St. George Mayor Karl Brooks light the caldron.
The torch traveled the final 200 feet before the caldron on a raised catwalk through the middle of the crowd.
Brooks, who had a stroke a few years ago and now has some trouble walking, was assisted by Gary Esplin, St. George's city manager.
"I told Gary that he carried for the 12 years I was mayor so he can carry me 200 feet more," Brooks quipped.
Earlier Monday, thousands of people, including bus loads of schoolchildren, gathered on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Monument Valley to welcome the flame. The crowd swarmed the final two torch runners, Wilfred Billey, a Navajo code talker in World War II, and Billy Mills, an Oglala Sioux who won a gold medal in track at the 1964 Summer Games.
Excited spectators ran with Mills as he made his way across the desert trail to light a caldron at midmorning.
In addition to Arches National Park, the relay made its way through two more national parks, Bryce Canyon and Zion.
At Bryce, the flame was carried by cross-country skiers along the canyon rim between lookout points and snowshoed down and up the Queen's Garden Trail.
In Zion the relay started at the east end of the Pa'rus Trail. The torch will pass Tuesday through Sanpete County and end up in Utah County, where a celebration has been planned at LaVell Edwards Stadium.
Former BYU football coach LaVell Edwards is scheduled to light the caldron.
Contributing: Dennis Romboy
E-MAIL: pthunell@desnews.com