SAUGUS — For four hours Sunday, the 11U Lynnfield Jimmy Fund Baseball Team, along with classic and movie cars, took over the Fuddruckers parking lot off Route 1 to raise funds for the team, and in turn, pediatric cancer treatment.
The Rev Up for a Cause Wheels of Hope car show came together in roughly a month — a much quicker turnaround than organizer and Coach Matthew Donahue is used to for car shows. Donahue, a Saugus police officer, has helped put together the Cars and Cops show for the past five years, which typically takes a year to organize. With just weeks to assemble Sunday’s car show at the suggestion of a player on the team, Donahue was impressed by the turnout — with roughly a dozen cars filling the lot.
“I didn’t expect many cars,” Donahue said, citing competition with bigger, end-of-summer shows. “We had a lot of that when people pulled in here today … a little pushback about ‘it’s just fun for fun?’ They want to go and compete for trophies, prizes that matter to them.”
“But we advertised it as was it (is) … a fundraiser to raise money for the Jimmy Fund. Nothing more,” he continued.
The Jimmy Fund, a subsidiary of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, is made up of community-based fundraisers and events that benefit the institute’s mission of providing care and cancer research for both children and adults, according to the fund’s website. The car show Sunday was specifically aimed at raising awareness and donations for those battling pediatric cancer — to that end, Fuddruckers donated a portion of sales to the fund.
Tyler Myles, a senior assistant in the fund’s event fundraising department, said events like the car show help spread the word about the fund and its research.
“We want to make sure that our impact is within the community and the community has the awareness to know that they can make a difference along with us,” she said. “Really tapping our community partners to get in and activate the communities — that’s what we want to see.”
And, she said, the turnout was impressive considering the tight turnaround Donahue and the team operated under.
“This is a really big turnout for it to be just a month out,” Myles said. “Just to have such a close community where they come out and support, but also show awareness and also get the kids really excited about fundraising is … really good to see.”
Though the lot wasn’t full of cars, those that did pull in certainly stood out, including a Gotham PD cruiser, complete with a Joker sitting in the back, a hot pink Westford Police Department cruiser, and a DeLorean à la “Back to the Future.”
But, the cars weren’t the only attraction — the show also featured face painting, music, a silent auction, a 50/50 raffle, and Lynnfield-baseball branded cornhole, essentially “a lot of interactive stuff kids can check out,” as Donahue put it.
“Just trying to get people to engage and talk, hopefully to bring out their stories to one another,” he said. “Everybody has a story, how cancer or pediatric cancer has affected somebody’s life.”
