SOUTHAMPTON, NY-More than 800 people took part in “Kites for a Cure,” a family kite-fly benefit held on Coopers Beach here over Memorial Day weekend. Rechler Equity Partners, Long Island’s largest owner of commercial real estate, acted as the primary sponsor for the event, which raised nearly $200,000 for Uniting Against Lung Cancer.

Since its founding in 2001 as Joan’s Legacy: The Joan Scarangello Foundation, the organization has raised more than $6 million to fund research into lung cancer. Joan Scarangello, a journalist and non-smoker, lost her own battle with the disease at age 47.

In 2009, the organization changed its name to Uniting Against Lung Cancer, bringing other groups into the fold. “We changed our name to enable every other family and organization to gather under our nonprofit umbrella, so we needed a more ‘umbrella’ name,” Roxanne Donovan, founder of Great Ink and a member of the Uniting Against Lung Cancer board, told GlobeSt.com this past November. “We believe that we will only beat lung cancer by uniting with other families, and we needed to change our name – to make it less about one person and more about the goal – to allow that to happen.”