Three-year-old Alex Enrique pilots the penguin car down the South University hill.

“Car number 4 wins, Pete, that’s car number 4!” declared Ben Kaufman into his walkie talkie. “Pete” was Kaufman’s Phi Delta Theta fraternity brother, Peter DiLeo, who needed that information to keep track of the brackets for 16 cars in a double-elimination soap box derby held Saturday morning.

To organize the ALS fundraising event on the South University Avenue hill just east of the Phi Delta Theta house, the University of Michigan fraternity had joined with Ann Arbor Active Against ALS [A2A3] a local nonprofit that launched last November.

The mechanics of the fundraising effort were laid out for The Chronicle by the captain of a pirate-boat car, Cameron Kortes. It cost $25 to race a car of your own construction, $75 if you wanted Phi Delta Theta or A2A3 to build a car for you to race, or $100 to have a car both built and raced for you. Kortes said that for this inaugural year of the race, the emphasis was not on raising as much money as possible, but rather to establish it as an event that would attract the interest of the community as well as members of the fraternity internally.

Cameron Kortes was captain of the pirate boat car, which was entered by the Phi Delta Theta "pirate house." It's not the fraternity's house, but is rented by students who all are members.

That was a sentiment echoed by Kaufman.  It was hard to generate enthusiasm for something like a walk-a-thon, he said – something the fraternity had tried before. The soap box derby was a new approach.

What wasn’t new was the  focus by Phi Delta Theta on fundraising for ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease). That’s a common fundraising goal across Phi Delta Theta chapters. As Kortes explained, “Lou Gehrig was a Phi.”

Kaufman said this year the soap box derby was timed during Greek Week at the University of Michigan, which consists of student-run philanthropic activities running this year from March 23-31. And next year, Kaufman said, they hope to more fully integrate the derby into Greek Week with the  goal of attracting the interest of other fraternities and sororities to participate in the derby.

Several people at the event  mentioned the possibility of a different venue next year. Later in the day, The Chronicle bumped into city attorney Stephen Postema outside the Michigan Theater, and he said he recalled from his youth a different venue for a soap box derby in Ann Arbor: the hill on South Main Street running past Pioneer High School, ending at Stadium and Main by the Michigan football stadium.

The races on Saturday had a minor glitch at the beginning. The steepness of the starting ramps was sending the cars crashing a bit too heavily onto the street surface of the hill. (A photo of the ramps was Twittered to us by a Chronicle reader.) The ramps were not constructed by Phi Delta Theta member Carl Stanhope, who’s currently enrolled in UM’s College of Literature, Science & the Arts, but is taking engineering courses and will be transferring to the School of Engineering soon. His fraternity brother, Cameron Kortes, reported it was an unnamed music major who had built the ramps, and who endured some mild teasing in his absence. Aside from their steepness, the ramps appeared to be solidly constructed.

Alida Norton and Madeline Ward convey how they feel about getting ready to zoom down the South University hill.

The ramps were quickly abandoned in favor of a push-start, and that method proved to work smoothly for the rest of the afternoon. The pattern would be repeated through the brackets.

A2A3 organizer David Lowenschuss would call out the start through his megaphone, “On your mark, get set, go!”

The cars would get  a steady push from a designated pusher.

A crowd of exuberant kids would give chase down the hill after the cars.

Phi Delta Theta brothers at the base of the hill with a line of straw bales, acted as “catchers” to help slow down the cars. The cars got carried back to the top of the hill.

Rinse. Repeat.

The speeds weren’t terribly fast, but for young drivers, the intervention of the “catchers” helped ensure safety. Three-year-old Alex Enrique piloted his car straight into a hay bale and sustained a busted lip, but it was quickly treated in the form of a piece of gum offered by a friend of his. Participants are required to sign waivers.

Also helping to enforce safety is the requirement that helmets be worn. Or two helmets, if you like. On Saturday, Max Showalter, grandson of Elmer Spreitzer, had duct-taped on top of his own helmet Spreitzer’s soap box derby helmet from the 1950 Cleveland derby, a year he won two races before being eliminated.

Spreitzer’s daughter, Gretchen, is married to Bob Schoeni, whose diagnosis with ALS last year led to the launching of A2A3.

Showing The Chronicle a photograph from 1950 of himself in a soap box derby car, Spreitzer summed up the photograph and the day’s race: “Everybody was young once.”

Max Showalter, grandson of Elmer Spreitzer, wearing his grandad's helmet.

Elmer Spreitzer in the early 1950s in Cleveland at age 13-14 years. Note: The T-shirt shows that the event was sponsored by the local newspaper.

An Binh Tran, kindergartener at Lawton Elementary, with his brother, Ky Nam Tran.

Bob Schoeni congratulates a young driver on his performance.

Bob Schoeni spritzes the wheels with some WD-40 at the top of the hill.

Maja Breivik-Carlsen and Siv Breivik get a push at the top of the hill. Breivik said they'd lived in Ann Arbor since January, and that Bob Schoeni and Gretchen Spreitzer were among the first people they'd met.

Ben Kaufman wields walkie-talkie and megaphone to manage the bottom of the hill.

Peter DiLeo kept track of the brackets for the double-elimination competition.

What fun looks like.

Everything's going smooth ... and then you drive straight into the city of Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor city council authorized the street closing for the event.

"You'll need a partner for this one." Bob Schoeni and Gretchen Spreitzer demonstrate a stretch during the group warm-up session.

On Sunday, the northeast corner of Burns Park was already teeming with humanity at 1 p.m. That was the start time that Ann Arbor Active Against ALS [A2A3] had scheduled for its kickoff fundraiser: a family field day. David Lowenschuss, one of the organizers, pointed out Bob Schoeni for us among the crowd waiting for the formal start to the festivities on a crispy overcast day. Schoeni had provided the impetus for the formation of the A2A3 nonprofit, when he was diagnosed with ALS in July.

A few minutes later, when Christopher Taylor took the microphone to help get the field day fun started, the gray skies had gone from spitting a few misty drops of rain to a steady sprinkle. It was hard to escape the conclusion that it was really raining. Added to a breezy day that saw temperatures in the low 50s, the rain meant that Taylor’s declaration, “It’s a beautiful day!” easily drew the chuckles it deserved from the crowd.

When Schoeni took the mic, he talked about the importance of the support from family, friends, neighbors – because of the hard evidence that showed that it actually lengthens lives of ALS patients. He thanked everyone for the support he’d already received, saying he was sure it had already added days, weeks, months, even years to his life. But ALS is a disease with no known cure or treatment. So was this another case of a guy standing in the rain declaring that it’s a beautiful day? More on the rain and that question later. First, a bit about the guy and the activity that filled the afternoon.

Bob Schoeni led off Sunday’s activities with some stretching exercises. Taylor had joked that stretching exercises were important to an injury-free day of activity – something that their insurance carrier would appreciate. Some of those stretches demonstrated by Schoeni were solo enterprises, even though they were done in a giant group of a couple hundred people: windmills, jumping jacks, torso twists. But other stretches involved partnering up – finding somebody to lean on. For those, Bob teamed up with his wife, Gretchen Spreitzer.

Soccer clinic with coaches from WideWorld Sports Center.

Bob told The Chronicle that he and Gretchen, when they were graduate students at the University of Michigan School of Business, hadn’t really experienced Ann Arbor as a community. They’d been focused pretty squarely on their studies. After graduating and living for a time in sunny California (Los Angeles), the place they picked out to raise their children was Ann Arbor. Asked why – when they presumably knew about the cold of an Ann Arbor February – Schoeni looked around the park and said, “This wouldn’t happen in L.A.”

What was happening was this: kids and adults were playing kickball, running obstacle courses, hula-hooping, participating in clinics for football and soccer, enjoying tasty baked goods, gobbling up grilled bratwurst, drinking hot chocolate – all to launch the fundraising efforts of A2A3. Those efforts will continue past Sunday partly in the form of various coaching programs. If you have a personal training goal – run a 5K under 19 minutes, complete a 10K, do 50 push-ups – A2A3 can provide coaching and training, plus support for fundraising connected with that goal. The idea is that as people complete their training goals, they collect the cash that others have pledged, and funnel it to A2A3.

The mighty right foot of Vivian (we believe that's her name) sends the ball skyward.

A2A3, in turn, will send that money to organizations like ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI), which employs 30 full-time scientists working exclusively on treatments and a cure for ALS. Amy Whipple, who is midwest regional director for ALS TDI, was on hand for the Burns Park fun. She said that research on ALS fell to organizations like ALS TDI because it was an “orphan disease,” meaning that the roughly 8,000 people diagnosed each year with ALS did not represent a large enough number to make it a financially attractive proposition for Big Pharma. Whipple was joined at the park by her cousin, Dan O’Connor, who is an undergraduate studying business at UM. O’Connor and Whipple had lost an aunt to ALS.

O’Connor is thinking of applying to graduate school in business. Chatting with O’Connor, Schoeni asked him what subject he thought he might like to specialize in. While he’s not firmly decided, O’Connor said he was thinking about the public policy end of things. “Hey, that’s my area!” exclaimed Schoeni, and told O’Connor he should get in touch later, because he’d be happy to talk to him about it. So Schoeni is not exactly shutting things down – he continues to add people and work to his world.

That same spirit of continuing to stretch himself was reflected in Schoeni’s turn on the kickball diamond. He tried to stretch a sure single into a double. Although he was thrown out on the base path, he had a smile on his face as the ball bounced off his back.

Calin St. Henry explains the obstacle course. He was assisted by his colleague, Trevor Ford. After running that event, they had to go work at Zingerman's Deli and Quizno's Subs, respectively.

Through the afternoon, the rain gradually abated. Around 4 p.m., the scheduled end of the event, and as the fun started to wind down, we had a chance to focus briefly on one of the tunes that had been pounding out of the PA speakers all afternoon: Elvis Costello’s “Forty-Five.” We asked Joel Dalton, who assembled the four hours worth of music onto an iPod, if it was just the same mix he used for the Burns Park Run.

No way. The soundtrack for the run is running-specific, Dalton said, and there are some tunes selected partly as a function of the morning-time start. We didn’t have a chance to press him for details on the selection criteria for the A2A3 event, because we didn’t want to miss the root beer giveaway. The remainder of the root beer (from a keg provided by Morgan and York) was being given away free – it had not been a popular drink on a cold November day.

But Costello’s song “Forty-Five” was probably a good note to wind down the day. In those lyrics, he riffs on the various interpretations of “forty-five” – from the year 1945, to the vinyl records that used to spin at 45 rpms, to chronological age. Next year Bob Schoeni will turn 45. And no, he’s not a guy standing in the rain declaring it’s a sunny day. He’s a guy running around in the rain, declaring it’s a sunny day, then watching the clouds part to let some rays of sun through. For the record: at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 2, the northeast corner of Burns Park was bathed in sun.

Editor’s note: In the month of November, Ann Arbor residents can help the A2A3 cause by mentioning A2A3 when making purchases at the following area retailers – they’ll donate to A2A3 the indicated percentage of their sales during the given time period:

Nov. 3-9
Nicola’s Books [5%]
Morgan and York [5%]

Nov. 10-13
Learning Express [20%]

Nov. 19
Running Fit [5%]

Nov. 1-30
Arbor Vacuum [10%]
Better Health Store [10%]

More Photos:

An actual play run from the wishbone formation. Coaching that part of the clinic was Tony Bertoia of the Washtenaw Junior Football Association. He joined his brother, Mike, to staff the clinic. Tony and Mike used to play softball with Bob Schoeni. And David Lowenschuss' son, Cooper, played on Mike's team this past year.

Bruce Crankshaw executes the spin-around-with-your-head-on-a-field-hockey-stick maneuver. Bruce's wife Molly teaches Sophie Schoeni in third grade at Burns Park Elementary.

Bob Schoeni gets put out in a game of kickball trying to stretch a single into a double.

The mighty left foot of David Lowenschuss, an organizer of the event, launches the ball into low orbit.

Photography of people wearing name tags proves ineffective as a way of putting names with faces. Kevin Ross with his two nieces, Clare and Ell-...? Kevin's wife, Suzanne, is president of the A2A3 nonprofit's board. Kevin has coached with Bob Schoeni and described his style as "naturally supportive."

Root beer comes in a keg when you get it from Morgan and York. Manning the tap for what would become a free root beer giveaway by the end of the afternoon is Steve Norton.

Elmer Spreitzer, father of Gretchen Spreitzer (wife of Bob Schoeni) and Rob Martin. Martin was high school friends with Spreitzer and Schoeni in Bowling Green, Ohio. He brought the grill and the brats – donated by Johnsonville – from Bowling Green, where he lives.

Plenty of baked goods for sale. Just to the right, apple fritters from Paula's Place. Out of the frame just to the right of the fritters were brownies from Zingerman's.

Brian Goldberg hands a cup of hot chocolate to son Zachary, who asked: "Can I get my money back if I don't like it?" A moot question, because Zachary declared that he loved it.

Possible reasons for Sophie Lete-Straka to be sad: cold, rain, lonesome, sleeves too long, 2-6 so far ...

Reasons to be glad: Hanging out with Dad – Eric Straka. Bob Schoeni was assistant coach of Sophie's sister Miranda's soccer team.