GLOUCESTER, Mass. (AP) — Supporters of Pete Frates are taking one last chilly plunge for the former college baseball player whose battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease the ALS ice bucket challenge.
The Frates family says Saturday’s annual “Plunge for Pete” at Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester, Massachusetts, will be their last.
The event, in its eighth year, raised money for the Pete Frates #3 Fund, which helped pay for Frates’ medical bills.
The former Boston College baseball player, who lived in Beverly, a suburb north of Boston, died Dec. 9 after a seven-year battle with ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He would have turned 35 on Saturday.
John Frates, Pete’s father, said the event has come “full circle” as the first one was also held on his son’s birthday. “It’s aligning perfectly for this one to be the last,” he The Gloucester Daily Times earlier this week.
John Frates said the family has accumulated roughly $500,000 in debt for their son’s medical care and the final fundraiser will hopefully help close the gap.
The family will continue to raise money for the separate Peter Frates Family Foundation that helps other ALS patients cover home health care costs, he said.
Pete Frates’s wife, Julie, said she’ll be participating in plunge for the first time.
She’s raised nearly $300,000 and promises to jump into the waters wearing “Pete’s favorite red white and blue bikini that I wore when we met on the Fourth of July, eight years ago,” according to her Facebook .
Organizers say nearly 300 have so far signed up to take the actual plunge. That exceeds the peak of 250 participants the event saw in 2014, the year the ice bucket challenge went viral and raised more than $200 million for ALS research worldwide, they say.
The ice bucket challenge involved pouring a bucket of ice water over your head and posting a video of it on social media and then challenge others to do the same or make a donation to charity. Most people did both.
ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that leads to paralysis due to the death of motor neurons in the spinal cord and brain. There is no known cure.