Kaylee Jones
Assistant Managing Editor
The Great Plains Coliseum Expo Building looked like a showroom floor as the 3rd Annual Lawton Car Show Benefit for Huntington’s disease (HD) took place at 10 a.m. on Sept. 21.
Hosted by the Southwest Oklahoma Affiliate of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, the show began with registration at 8:30 a.m.; roughly 30 cars turned up to raise awareness for Huntington’s Disease.
Kathy Timberlake and her husband, Pat, both Chairmen on the affiliate board, organized the event.
“We really get all different varieties of people,” Pat Timberlake said of the decision to hold a car show. “We want to get the educational stuff out to the public about Huntington’s and what it is, and we felt [a car show] would be one of the best ways to do it.”
Beth Howard, an attendee of the car show, has been showing cars with her husband for three or four years, but said she had been an auto enthusiast for much longer. Between the two, Howard said they owned five different cars for showing. However, it was their 1956 DeSoto Firedome they traveled 63 miles to show.
“The last couple of years, we got a flyer advertising the event, and the people went quite a ways to advertise,” Howard said. “I thought it would be nice to support a good cause.”
Volunteers and board members manned booths displaying educational pamphlets about Huntington’s, and one booth featured a watermelon of which attendees had to guess the weight to win.
According to the pamphlets, Huntington’s disease is “an inherited, progressively degenerative brain disorder that results in a loss of both mental faculties and physical control.”
The 580 Rollergirls also had a booth, where Molly Meet Your Maker and Trigger Trixie handed out flyers promoting their upcoming show.
“The registration fees from shows like this go for resources like [pamphlets],” Timberlake said. “They go for education, educational speakers and advocacy. And research, which is probably the bottom of where it goes, but it’s still there.”
Timberlake explained Huntington’s was a disease that has afflicted her family for many years.
Her first husband died of the disease at 47, leaving her with three children, all potential carriers of the disease.
Her son, Bradley, later developed Huntington’s as well.
Lawton-Ft. Sill residents affected by the disease can attend a support group, which takes place on the first Tuesday of every month at the Westminster Presbyterian Church.
“We have a national association, HDSA,” Kathy said, “and then it filters down; you can be a chapter and have your own money. We’re an affiliate, a step down. We hold events, and have a director that handles our money. But, the better event we have, the better resources we get.”
Kathy said, as an affiliate, they are required to hold two events a year; however, they hold three.
In addition to the car show, they hold an annual Education Day in February as well as an annual Hope Walk in June.
Regarding the car show turnout, Kathy said: “We’re a little disappointed. We’ve had about 60 cars the last two years, and we don’t have quite that many today.”
On a more positive note, Kathy added: “We’re getting a lot of input about what we can do better next year, so we’re going to do it one more time.”