When Frank Ball’s plane landed, the world was much different from when he had taken off. “The day I flew back was the day they announced the first case of COVID-19 in Santa Clara County, where I flew back from. I self-quarantined for two weeks just in case and in that time frame the whole world flipped upside down.”
His son’s birthday was coming up, and he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to be with his friends for his birthday, but that wasn’t the only birthday he was worried about.
“It kind of bugged me, if he can’t have a party, what about the underprivileged kids whose parents have to work as well? This would be an awesome opportunity for us to take the desire to go out and do our weekend drives with our cars and, since we can’t go anywhere, turn it into something special we do for kids,” Ball said.
For a while, Ball and some of his friends in the car community would go out every weekend and drive past a few kids in their sports cars. “Every weekend we were going out and coordinating Supercar Birthdays for Kids. As everything started getting closer to the norm and everyone’s schedules started filling up again, we had to slow it down to one or two times a month.”
It started as a few friends getting together and bringing their sports cars out for a drive and surprising some kids for their birthday, but with the help of Sara White, a special education teacher from Forsyth County, it turned into much more.
“I kind of started this on a whim,” Ball said. “Craig [Mendel] picked up on the second or third drive and has been on every single Thursday night planning call and has stepped up and helped us with some of the coordination of the routes. Sara came in with all of her contacts, got us into the demographic for children. [She] got us in contact with the Bald Ridge Lodge, out of Gwinnett County, and that has been off the charts.”
The Bald Ridge Lodge is a place for boys, ages 12 and up, that are homeless. The lodge is a non-profit that provides housing and schooling for them. Supercar Birthdays for Kids encourages donations to the Bald Ridge Lodge from families that are more affluent than most and, of course, they make sure to bring their cars to the lodge on a regular basis.
“We wanted these boys to know that just because your life is a struggle right now, does not mean this is your destiny,” White said. “You can rise up, above and beyond this because Frank is someone that did that.”
“It’s important to share with these boys that you can still continue with school and have big dreams. Seeing cars like that helps them dream big.” – Sara White
“We want to try and keep this going because even for children that don’t come from single family homes, or underprivileged homes, it continues to bring that smile,” White said.
The group has been asked on numerous occasions what will happen after COVID-19. Ball explained, “The biggest thing that I’ve learned is that people are out there struggling, pandemic or not, especially single families and their kids, and we can still service the community and the fulfillment of philanthropy that we want to do for our community. I don’t see this going away.”
