What started with some friends in pop-up campers going to a race has turned into a great work for charity.
The Dover Millionaires have been attending the fall race at Dover International Raceway 13 years ago. As it is with many NASCAR races, beverages are consumed. With every beverage, there is a can tab. The group started collecting can tabs one year because they had met a race fan who was on dialysis.
“That is how we got started collecting tabs,” said Don Miller, president of the Dover Millionaires. “We met a guy who was on dialysis at the race and we started collecting tabs to help pay for dialysis.”
A couple years later, the Millionaires found out that Ronald McDonald House was collecting tabs to help offset the cost of providing places for parents of seriously ill children to stay.
“We decided to switch to Ronald McDonald House because we felt it was a more local charity,” said Miller. “We have a lot of people from the Tyrone area who have had to use the Ronald McDonald House in Pittsburgh. This is our way of giving back.”
It was almost two years ago when Brittany Wilson and her family, who used the Ronald McDonald House in Pittsburgh when Brittany was a baby, gave nearly 7,000 can tabs to the Millionaires and at the time it was the largest single donation of tabs the group had collected. That was until last September.
A group of race fans from Towanda who had enjoyed some of the Millionaire’s tailgate parties during race weekend made a donation last year. The donation was over 300,000 tabs. They vowed that it would be much larger this year.
“We were shocked when they came over,” said Miller. “Dave (Brouse) told us they had a bad year collecting tabs when we first saw them. Then Friday night they came over and gave us 1,265,000 tabs. It just floored us.”
The group from Towanda consists of Dave Brouse, Chris Chilson, Charlie Evans, Audrey Cranmer, Tom Larnard and a guy referred to as Stretch.
If you do the math, that is over 5,208 cases of soda or beer that made up the tabs collected.
“Dave has the schools in Bradford County involved in the tab collection,” said Miller. “He has a competition between the schools and he throws a pizza party for the winning school. Some of the schools up there have water jugs in the class rooms to collect tabs. It is amazing what they do to collect the tabs for Ronald McDonald House.”
The tab on a soda or beer can is the only complete portion of the can that is 100 percent aluminum.
Since Ronald McDonald House started collecting tabs, over 400 million tabs have been collected raising over $300,000.
The donation from the Towanda group is in the name of Dave’s grandson Vincent Wolf.
“My family has used Ronald McDonald House in Pittsburgh many times,” said Brouse. “He had some problems when he was little to include a collapsed palate and his family has stayed at Ronald McDonald House when he was having his surgeries.”
The Dover Millionaires are looking to use some of the Towanda ideas locally.
“We collect tabs at the Halloween parade and Christmas parades and we also collect at our dances,” said Miller. “We are looking at going to the school board about possibly putting collection points there and other new avenues for collecting tabs.”
Since the Dover Millionaires have started collecting tabs, over 5 million tabs have been collected.
“It feels good to know that we are helping families in need while we are having a good time,” said Miller. “When you meet people who have been to Ronald McDonald House, it makes you take a look at how fortunate we are and how thankful we are to have the opportunity to give back in some way.”
