The world’s latest craze made its way to the Portage Township YMCA on Tuesday. By being the latest participant in the ALS Cold Water Challenge, RN Health and Wellness Coordinator Danny Gonzalez decided to have ice water thrown onto him amongst his YMCA family, and gave the dumping honors to seven kids at the Y.
In case you aren’t familiar with what the ALS ice bucket challenge is, or what it stands for, here is a run down: The ALS ice bucket challenge started when Chris Kennedy decided to change the rules of the game to tie the challenge to a specific cause. The ice bucket challenge first started by choosing a charity to donate to after dumping ice on your head - but by being a relative of someone who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, he decided to make the ALS Association his charity of choice. From then challenged three people to donate to the cause after dumping the ice water onto themselves and slowly but surely the challenge snowballed into what it is today. Over the past weeks, around 13 million people have posted videos on their Facebook pages regarding the ALS ice bucket challenge, and in result, the ALS Association has raised over $15 million dollars for research.
What most people don’t realize about the ice bucket challenge is that it’s about charity and recognizing that there is a reason for people to voluntarily throw cold water on themselves, but Danny Gonzalez got that message from the get-go.
“I think that the bucket challenge is a great way to get the word out about ALS, which not many people knew about before this whole thing started.” Gonzalez said, “People don’t understand the disease in itself and by increasing the awareness of this terrible disease, it motivates people to donate for the research that’s desperately needed.”
After being challenged by Anita Reyna Bobowsky, a physical trainer in Chicago, he wanted twist the challenge by getting the kids at the Portage Township YMCA involved. By having them participate, Gonzalez believed that they were being educated on what the trend was all about.
“By getting the kids to participate I wanted to encourage them to be motivated to be involved in important issues like this.” Gonzalez explained, “Here at the Portage Y we want the kids to be involved with the community and we want to empower them to have a part in potentially life changing help like this challenge.”
Each of the seven kids got a chance to dump the freezing water on Gonzalez, and delightedly so. When it was Zachary Crizer’s turn to pour the water he shouted, “There goes your mohawk Danny boy!” As each of the kids took a step forward for their turn the crowd of Portage YMCA regulars and employees chanted “ALS! ALS!” to keep the momentum going.
Jane Powers, a Marketing Assistant from St. Mary’s Medical Center, said that Gonzalez had a lot of persistence to get iced seven times. “You can see that he looks like he’s getting a brain freeze, but he’s doing incredibly well.”
In total, Gonzalez nominated twenty-two people, which is way above the average of three. He started by nominating four Doctors from St. Mary’s Medical Center - Dr. Obmaces, Dr. Bryant, Dr. Huynh, and Dr. Barajas. Next were his siblings, cousins, and friends. The last list of people were all public figures, starting with Pastor Monte Dillard of the First Church of God in Evanston, IL, to Pastor Joel Osteen, Christian Musician Lecrae, and then to Peyton Manning.
Why nominate famous people? Gonzalez had a simple explanation: “There’s a lot of people being diagnosed every day and I wanted to get the word out to as many people as possible, even if it’s someone I’ve never met.”
After all of the ice was gone, Gonzalez was freezing and proclaimed that he was going to be a new dad in March, and helped raise awareness for a serious and previously unknown disease. Like most people who accomplished the ice bucket challenge, Gonzalez did say that the cold got to him a bit. He summed up the day by saying, “I’m so pumped. The adrenaline is keeping me warm - for now. I’m glad I participated even if there was cold water involved.”
