By Steve Knight/reporter3@trcle.com
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Two teenage boys from Godley soon may be visiting a grocery store near you.
They won’t necessarily be looking for groceries, but, rather, sponsors to help them participate in a fund drive to raise money for the ALS Association of North Texas.
Riggin Cleveland and his cousin, Garrett Murdick, both 15-year-old sophomores at Godley High School, will participate in the 2010 Walk To Defeat ALS on Oct. 9 at Trinity Park Pavilion No. 3 in Fort Worth.
Participants check-in is 8:30 a.m. and the walk is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. Parking is available at Farrington Field.
The family became involved in supporting ALS research after Cleveland’s grandmother, Barbara Turner, was diagnosed with the incurable disease in April 2008.
Although Turner lost her battle with the disease on April 7, Cleveland and Murdick still will visit neighborhoods and grocery stores in the coming weeks in search of sponsors for this year’s walk.
“In the 2008 walk, we got started a little late, but we were still able to raise over $10,000 in a little over three weeks,” Cleveland said. “My cousin Garrett and all of my friends and I stood outside of grocery stores three times a week and asked for donations as well as letting us tell them about ALS.”
Cleveland’s mother, Dani Hood, said that the boys have educated themselves about Lou Gehrig and the disease and they know there is need for more research funding.
“They sell awareness. They’re really good at it,” she said.
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis is a motor neuron disease first brought to international attention by Gehrig, the New York Yankee first baseman, in 1939 when he abruptly retired from baseball after playing in a then-major league record 2,130 consecutive games.
According to the ALS Association of North Texas website, people between the ages of 40 and 70 are most vulnerable, and as many as 30,000 Americans have the disease at any one time.
ALS has taken the lives of Hall of Fame pitcher Jim “Catfish” Hunter, Senator Jacob Javits, actors Michael Zaslow and David Niven, creator of Sesame Street Jon Stone, boxing champion Ezzard Charles, NBA Hall of Fame basketball player George Yardley, pro football player Glenn Montgomery, golfer Jeff Julian, golf caddie Bruce Edwards, musician Belly Ledbetter, photographer Eddie Adams, entertainer Dennis Day, jazz musician Charles Mingus, composer Dimitri Shostakovich, former Vice President Henry A. Wallace and U.S. Army General Maxwell Taylor.
Cleveland said he is dedicated to continue his grandmother’s fight.
“This amazing woman showed me each and every day how important I was to her. God blessed me in even knowing someone so wonderful,” he said. “I never left her side at all in her final weeks and days and I will not leave her side now. This cause was so important to her as it is to me and my family.”
Hood said that she is proud of her son and Murdick for taking a mature leadership role in obtaining funds for ALS research.
“I am so proud of my kids,” she said. “For them to be doing something that is so unselfish, they know why there is a need.”
For more information or to donate, visit Cleveland’s website at web.alsa.org/goto/riggin.org, e-mail gwildcats95@aol.com or call the ALS Association at 972-714-0088.
