‘Tell every person you know’: Five years later, the oral history of how the Ice Bucket Challenge spread (2024)

It was a hot, humid Tuesday morning in early August 2014, and the New England Patriots were in Richmond, Va., for the second of two joint practice sessions with the Washington Redskins. For Pats fans, it was non-stop good news — first-year cornerback Darrelle Revis was fitting in quite nicely. Longtime nose tackle Vince Wilfork could still cover a lot of ground. Tom Brady was, well, Tom Brady.

At some point during that sticky Richmond morning — and this didn’t make it into the papers — wide receiver Julian Edelman found his way to Patriots coach Bill Belichick and made a special request: He wanted to know if it’d be OK with the no-frills, do-your-job, Hall of Fame-bound coach if he, Julian Edelman, respected NFL veteran, could wander off by himself for a few minutes and dump a bucket of ice over his head.

Additionally, Edelman asked for permission to disseminate a video of this on social media.

In any other August, Edelman’s temerity would have earned him one of those frosty Belichick stares that has livened up many a press briefing over the years. But this was August 2014, and we were living in a newfangled, reconfigured Summer of Love in which it wasn’t enough to merely make love not war; in thisSummer of Love, you were required to make ice, not water, then dump the ice over your head.

And so Belichick, wiser to the ways of the outside world than he would have you think, gave Edelman his blessings to go do … the Ice Bucket Challenge.

A few days later, the entire team, including Belichick and Patriots owner Robert Kraft, did … the Ice Bucket Challenge.

Edelman did the Ice Bucket Challenge, the Patriots did the Ice Bucket Challenge, nearly the whole world did the Ice Bucket Challenge. If you did not, why not? Everyone from Hollywood A-listers to Saskatoon zookeepers abandoned decorum by dumping ice over their heads during the Summer of Love, 2014 — even if now, five years later, it’s not entirely clear how it all started. You would have a better chance trying to identify the first person to speak the words “Have a nice day.”

Once it had found its sea legs, the Ice Bucket Challenge worked this way: Having been called out by somebody in your circle to either do the Ice Bucket Challenge or donate money to a specific charity, you’d record yourself dumping a bucket of ice over your head, and then, following the obligatory (and often scenery-chewing) gasps, headshakes and woooooo-eees, you’d issue the challenge to yet more people.

And then those friends would do the Ice Bucket Challenge and send it to some of theirfriends. It became the modern-day incarnation of an old-fashioned chain letter.

Naturally, there were get-off-my-lawn types who did plenty of tsk-tsking, their pieties ranging from the wasting of our valuable natural resources to don’t-we-have-anything-better-to-do-with-our-time. There were Ice Bucket Challenge abuses, including scam artists who set up fake accounts in an attempt to bilk “donations.” In Ohio, an autistic teenager was tricked into allowing himself to be doused with bodily fluids, prompting an enraged Drew Carey, the Ohio-born actor, to offer a reward for information that would lead to the arrest of those responsible. Three teens eventually were sentenced to community service.

And let’s never forget this oft-stated harrumph, meant to be the final word on the Ice Bucket Challenge: It was all just an internet fad.

Which misses the entire point, because of course it was an internet fad. Without YouTube, without Instagram, without Facebook, without Twitter, there would not have been an Ice Bucket Challenge. It was nowhere, and then it was everywhere, and then, just as the weather was turning cool and we were all going back to work or packing up for school, the Ice Bucket Challenge made a quiet exit.

But what an internet fad it was. While many people did the Ice Bucket Challenge believing it would gain them access to the cool kids’ table, millions more did it to raise awareness — and money, mountains of it — for a multitude of causes.

That the Ice Bucket Challenge became identified with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, was due partly to timing and partly to luck, but mostly because the families of three ALS patients — Anthony Senerchia Jr. of Pelham, N.Y., Pat Quinn of Yonkers, N.Y., and Pete Frates of Beverly, Mass. — discovered they had more friends than they could possibly have imagined. And just as important, they understood these friends were willing to form an army to fight ALS.

The ALS Association of America calculated that it received $115 million in donations as a direct result of the Ice Bucket Challenge. Worldwide, more than $220 million was raised. According to ALSA vice president Brian Frederick, there was a period in August when the nonprofit received $10 million per day for seven consecutive days.

“We believe 17 million people uploaded videos to Facebook,” Frederick said. “We had 2.5 million new donors from the Ice Bucket Challenge.”

These figures don’t even take into account other charities — cancer, MS, heart disease, the list goes on and on — that were the focal point of early editions of “cold water challenges” and Ice Bucket Challenges.

Donations aside, there emerged a discussion about ALS not seen since the days of Lou Gehrig, the great Iron Horse of the New York Yankees who delivered his iconic “Luckiest Man” speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, and died of the disease on June 2, 1941, at just 37. Even then, only a select few were invited to participate in the Lou Gehrig ALS discussion; most people who followed Gehrig’s plight didn’t even know he had the disease.

“Nobody had heard of ALS, and when they did hear about it, they didn’t understand it,” said Jonathan Eig, author of “Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig.” “A lot of people defaulted to what they knew about polio and thought he could live with it.”

Nancy Frates, who emerged as a fierce activist for ALS research and funding after her son’s diagnosis, said the family received thousands of letters, emails and Facebook messages during the height of the Ice Bucket Challenge.

“I remember one letter in particular,” she said. “It was from a young woman. She was a teenager when her father died 15 years earlier, and she said, ‘I remember when he died. Part of his agony was that nobody understood why he was dying, what disease he had, what his journey was. And I’ve woken up every morning for the past 15 years waiting for what’s happening right now.’ And her last line was, ‘I know my dad is up there dancing.’”

What follows is an oral history of the Ice Bucket Challenge to commemorate its fifth anniversary. All of the interviews were conducted either in person or by telephone. The interview with Pat Quinn took place at his Yonkers home on May 19, while we watched the YES Network’s telecast of his beloved Yankees playing the Tampa Bay Rays. Because he no longer is able to communicate verbally, his answers were delivered by Eye Gaze technology, which enables users to optically type out messages on a computer screen that are then spoken digitally.

Anthony Senerchia Jr., who lived with ALS for 14 years, died Nov. 25, 2017. He was 46. He is represented here by his wife, Jeanette Senerchia. Pete Frates continues to fight ALS, but his health has deteriorated to the degree that even Eye-Gaze is beyond his powers. He is represented here by his parents, John and Nancy Frates, and other members of his family.

In spring 2014, videos were popping up on social media showing people taking part in such stunts as plunging into cold water and stepping in front of powerful fire hoses, these deeds often labeled as “cold water challenges.” Many of the videos were good, clean fun and raised money for worthy causes. Others got out of hand and rankled public officials. “Police toss cold water on latest fad,” read a headline in the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune on May 9, 2014, with the sub-headline cutting to the chase: “Jumping into rivers, lakes is dangerous trend, cops say.” The problem? Officials from a variety of departments had been pressed into action in response to reports that a man had jumped off a bridge that spans the Mississippi River — only to learn it was a “cold water challenge.” In June, firefighters in Washington Township, N.Y., got into hot water for staging a cold water challenge in which a firefighter stepped in front of hose blasts from two trucks. And yet there were times when these events were treated with cheers and salutes, which is what happened in March 2014, when residents of Grundy County in Tennessee whooped and hollered as they ran into freezing cold water to raise money for a 22-month-old girl named Madi Rogers who had been diagnosed with diabetes. “It’s all because we love this little girl,” one participant told a Chattanooga TV station. On May 7 in Burrton, Kan., a 5-year-old girl named Hadley Boman pointed the hose from a fire truck at a collection of teachers and school officials. It was a cold water challenge to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Hadley and her 1-year-old sister, Harper, were born with the disease.

Calamity McEntire, an assistant women’s basketball coach at the University of Arizona, had been watching these videos. And on a June day in 2014 when Wildcats head coach Niya Butts talked of doing something for the Kay Yow Cancer Fund — named in memory of the late North Carolina State coach who had died of breast cancer in 2009 — McEntire had an idea.

Calamity McEntire: I mentioned it halfheartedly. I had seen people posting videos on social media, and I said, “What is this?” They were really funny videos. Some of them were ridiculously funny. So I said, “What if wedid the Cold Water Challenge and did it for a purpose?”

Niya Butts: So we had been thinking about what is near and dear to women’s college basketball, and that was the Kay Yow Fund. What I decided was, let’s attach our (Cold Water Challenge) to the organization and see if we can help raise funds, right? So we’re sitting there talking, and we say, “You know what? We will challenge other coaches, assistant coaches, to do it.”

McEntire: And I said, “Oh, man, that’s great,” and I figured out a hashtag for it — #chillinforcharity. So that’s how that originated. I had done some research a little bit before we did it and found that the Cold Water Challenge kind of started with firefighters. I don’t recall where.

Butts: I do remember seeing people do the ice-water challenge before we were doing it. I just didn’t always know why they were doing it. Some of them were just doing it for fun, just to do it.

McEntire: When the video guys came out, we did it at 7 o’clock in the morning, and everybody was like, “What are we doing out here?” We had no idea about the kind of money it would raise, much less that it would continue to spread all over our country and inspire different ways to raise money and impact people’s lives.

While the University of Arizona called its endeavor the Cold Water Challenge — with McEntire’s #chllinforcharity hashtag — it triggered the format that within weeks would form the basis of the Ice Bucket Challenge: Butts, in the video, challenges fellow Pac-12 coaches Cori Close of UCLA, Lindsay Gottlieb of Cal, Linda Lappe of Colorado and Charli Turner Thorne of Arizona State.

Linda Lappe: It was something that everyone could rally around, and that’s what made it go like it did. And any time there’s a competition involved when it comes to athletics, everybody seems to want to take part. We happened to be doing one of our camps at the University of Colorado when we got the Challenge, and we got everyone, including all the young campers, so they could be a part of it.

Cori Close: I was on campus, and I saw one of my players, and she pulled out her phone and showed me and explained that I had been challenged. So we did it at my house, with my staff. After we were done, my team ended up throwing me in the pool.

Charli Turner Thorne: I’m not Miss Social Media. By the time somebody told me about it, we had to do it in like a few hours. “Niya’s challenging you,” this and that. “What is this? OK, let’s do it!” And we just did it. It was pretty quick. Like athletes and coaches do, you just drop everything and find a way to get it done.

Turner Thorne challenged fellow women’s basketball coaches Tara VanDerveer (Stanford), Muffet McGraw (Notre Dame) and Geno Auriemma (UConn).

Turner Thorne: We talk all the time about how basketball is a vehicle to find your voice, to have an impact in your community after you graduate, after you play professionally. And we really, really encourage our women … yes, it was competition, it was fun, of course. Sports are big business, it’s TV, it’s pressure for these college student-athletes, but this was a platform to make a statement, to be a positive influence.

Gottlieb, now an assistant coach with the Cleveland Cavaliers, provided an early example of how a creative, choreographed Cold Water Challenge can become a talker. In addition to using Cal’s women’s basketball players for the video, Gottlieb also invited swimmer Missy Franklin, the winner of four gold medals at the 2012 Summer Olympics who was then a student at Cal, to participate.

Lindsay Gottlieb: Missy was the darling of the Olympics before she came to Cal, and I said we have to get her involved somehow. So we scripted a little scene where we’re getting ready to do it, and we had Missy walk by, and she says, “Wait, wait, wait, you’re not ready.” And she hands everyone Cal swimming caps. And then we did it.

While the efforts of Butts and McEntire were designed to attract the attention of other Pac-12 women’s basketball coaches, it soon spread to other sports throughout the country.

Butts: It became this big, huge phenomenon. You know, we’re all pretty competitive, and it became a thing of who can do the craziest one. We had a coach in Georgia diving off a diving board. We had whole teams doing it, and challenging other teams and players to do it.

Lappe: It went extremely far from that point. When it was taking off I was thinking, “Hey, didn’t that start in women’s college basketball?” I was, “Oh, wow, very good idea.”

McEntire: We honestly didn’t know if anyone would do it. And then once they did it and started challenging, and, of course, the Pac 12 burned out quickly because there are only so many schools, and it then it started spreading. It was insane. For a while, we were tracking it every day, and it got so big we couldn’t track it. It went in all kinds of directions.

The Arizona-inspired Cold Water Challenge received national media attention, including a piece on ESPN on June 19.

McEntire: It kind of went over to the men’s (basketball) side a little bit, and then (people) changed the hashtag, and they started raising money for their own foundations. And then golf picked it up.

Butts: I have no idea (how that happened) other than the fact that when I say so many people were doing it, if you go to our video and look at everyone we challenged, a lot of people started challenging other people. We even had our (athletic director, Greg Byrne) doing it, so other ADs started doing it based on what we were doing. And then it just kind of snowballed from there. Other people could have seen what we were trying to do and then attached it to whatever they were trying to do. Who knows?

However it got there, what is not debatable is that the professional golf community was pivotal to the rise of the Ice Bucket Challenge. Golfer Rickie Fowler recorded a video about a week after the Niya Butts video, except that he called his effort the “Ice Bucket Challenge.” Fowler said he had been challenged by motocross racer Jeremy McGrath, who also called his video an Ice Bucket Challenge. Motocross driver Jeff Northrop did an Ice Bucket Challenge. In addition to Fowler, early-edition Ice Bucket Challengers included Justin Rose, Michelle Wie, Keegan Bradley and Paula Creamer. But as was the case elsewhere, ALS had not yet emerged as the primary focus of the Challenge. For instance, when golfer Greg Norman challenged Matt Lauer of NBC’s “Today Show” to do the Ice Bucket Challenge, Lauer did so on the air, live, on the morning of July 18, along with saying he planned to make a donation to Hospice of Palm Beach County. And yet the golf community was beginning to connect with ALS on several levels.

Tom Watson, World Golf Hall of Famer: We had (golfer) Jeff Julian, who had contracted ALS, and my caddy, Bruce Edwards, who had contracted ALS. They were fairly public about their travails with the disease. They both subsequently passed from it. So it was prominent in our community. You see it in football, you see it in baseball, you see it in the other sports. Beyond that, you see it in all walks of life. It doesn’t choose its victims from any social-economic strata.

The Ice Bucket Challenge was now ricocheting inside the golf community, with seemingly everyone nominated, often more than once. James Whatmore, a fitness instructor from England who works with pro golfers, did two Ice Bucket Challenges. For his second, he cited ALS and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society as areas of interest. But it was his first Challenge, in which he only mentions the National MS Society, that plays a key role in connecting the Ice Bucket Challenge to ALS. He had been challenged by golf pro Tyler Beasley, who had been challenged by golf pro Adam Devine and World Long Drive competitor Kevin Shook. Whatmore then challenged swing coach Jon Bullas, bringing it one step away from a professional golfer named Chris Kennedy. Once Kennedy got his hands on the Ice Bucket Challenge, everything changed.

Jon Bullas: I thought (Whatmore) just sent it as a joke. I made fun of him because he really didn’t pour the ice bucket over his head. I did it in my backyard with my kids. My kids threw a bucket of ice over my head. I actually was trying to raise funds for a local charity named after a little girl here in Florida. And I called out five people to do the same. If not, they had to donate $100 to the charity.

Bullas’ chosen charity was the Payton Wright Foundation, which supports pediatric brain cancer research and provides financial assistance to families with a child being treated for brain cancer. Payton — who told her father, “Don’t worry, Dad. It’s gonna be a good day,” as she was wheeled into her first surgery — was diagnosed on May 17, 2006. She died on May 29, 2007, at age 5.

Bullas: I just always followed her story. She (had been in) the local elementary school here in Florida. She was struggling with sickness, and then she passed away, and her family established a charity in her name. I was trying to support their charity, so I did it for that and called out five people, and one of them was Chris Kennedy. When he did it, he changed the charity to ALS.

Chris Kennedy: So (Bullas) said, “I’m doing the Ice Bucket Challenge for the Payton Wright Foundation,” and he said he was nominating me and a couple of his friends. I was away at a golf tournament, and I did it in a buddy’s backyard, my wife taped it, and I decided to pick ALS. My wife’s cousin, Jeanette, her husband was Anthony Senerchia, and he had been battling it at that point for five or six years, maybe longer, and I said, “I’m going to do this for ALS, do this for Anthony.” So I nominated Jeanette along with two of my golf buddies, saying we were doing this for ALS, and I dumped a bucket of water on my head. And then I sent it to Jeanette. I think it was on Facebook. I might have texted it to her, as well.

A poster on Chris Kennedy’s YouTube page noted that “if the ice bucket challenge for ALS is the universe, this video is the big bang.”

Kennedy: I had no idea where this was going. I was more just doing it to do something for Anthony, make him laugh. And then also to fire up Jeanette in the process to one-up me.

Jeanette Senerchia: Chris is married to my cousin, Ariana, and we all have this very fun relationship. It’s kind of like poking each other back and forth all the time. He’s a really fun guy. He had sent me a text, and I think it was on my Facebook page, where he had nominated me for the Ice Bucket Challenge. And I called him back, and I said, “You’re an asshole, and I’m not doing this. You’re being ridiculous.”

Kennedy: We like to bust each other’s chops. Again, it was something to do in the summer to hopefully get a few laughs.

Senerchia: We were just kind of messing around with it. He kept sending me text messages back — “You have three hours left!” “You have two hours left!” So I grabbed my daughter (Taya) and my iPad, and I was, “All right, let’s go outside and just do this real quick.” So I did it, and I tagged, I think, three of my friends, and after that happened, it just kind of started to snowball in our community. We live in a really small community (Pelham, N.Y.), and if you didn’t go to school with me, you probably went to school with my sisters or my cousin. There’s a lot of history and roots here among the different families.

Kristen Wrona, friend of Jeanette Senerchia: I’m originally from Michigan, but my husband is from the town, and that’s how I was introduced to it. He was one of Anthony’s best friends. It’s one of those towns where everyone knows everything and everyone. It’s like a big family.

Senerchia: A lot of people didn’t know Anthony had ALS for a long time because he didn’t want anyone to know. It was always slowly progressing; he wanted to kind of, I think, just live his life without having a stigma attached to it. So we lived in silence for probably three or four years before it eventually got around town. We just kind of lived our life. We had a child, Taya’s the most amazing thing ever. … (But) people were wondering why he wasn’t going to church. I believe it was my daughter’s pediatrician, and he called me and said, “This seems out of character, but does your husband have an alcohol problem?” And I was, like, “No.” I said to him, “Oh, my goodness, I never told you. He has ALS.” And he’s like, “Oh, my goodness, because I thought he was drunk because his words were slurring.” He was devastated when we told him. So many people thought there was something wrong. They didn’t know what it was.

Wrona: The people who were close to him basically knew right from the time that he knew. But he was very private about it for many years. As his daughter got older, and she had friends over the house, she felt embarrassed, and he didn’t want her to be embarrassed, so that’s when his goal was to raise awareness for ALS so people would know what it was and his daughter would feel more comfortable.

Anthony Senerchia Jr. was born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., and raised in Pelham. A 1989 graduate of Pelham High School, where he was the captain of the football team, he earned a degree in civil engineering at Manhattan College and later started his own contracting business. He was a volunteer firefighter among many other community endeavors. He later helped establish the Anthony Senerchia Jr. ALS Charitable Foundation, and in 2015, one year after the Ice Bucket Challenge, he was named “Man of the Year” by the Pelham Civic Association. He and Jeanette, who had been high school sweethearts, were married in 2003. He was diagnosed with ALS a little more than a year later. Taya was born in 2008.

Senerchia: My husband was very, very involved in our town. He developed our Pop Warner football program. He had coached children through the years. He did it for probably 10 years before we had Taya. And then he continued on for as long as he could, and then he had to stop.

Annie Clemente, friend of Jeanette Senerchia: He was really so active in football, and our whole, tight-knit community was football-oriented. When he opened up about the whole ALS situation, his number (in high school) had been No. 44, and everyone in town was wearing that number as an honor to him. It was really cool. It was honoring him for all that he did for the community even before he had ALS.

Senerchia: We had just started our nonprofit organization, and we were trying to help people because it’s such a financially devastating disease. … I think Anthony was blown away when (the Ice Bucket Challenge) first started. It wasn’t that everybody in the world was doing it; it was more about the community. He was really touched because it was just like, “Wow, everybody came out to support me,” and they supported our foundation, which was really nice. That was something that was pretty impactful for him. And our daughter got to see our community come together.

Taya Senerchia was 6 years old in summer 2014, old enough to know a good Ice Bucket Challenge when she saw one. Imagine her surprise when she learned her favorite singer did a good Ice Bucket Challenge.

Taya Senerchia: Taylor Swift was my favorite person when I was little, and she kinda still is. I’m pretty sure someone tagged us on it, one of our friends. I was so excited when I saw her do it, telling my friends from school, “Look who did the Ice Bucket Challenge!”

Jeanette Senerchia: Taylor Swift isn’t just her favorite artist, she’s mine as well. That’s our joined music. We both love her; we both see her in concert every time she’s here. When she did the Ice Bucket Challenge, she, Anthony and I were sitting on the couch together when we watched it for the first time.

As friends, family members and supporters of the Senerchia family began doing the Ice Bucket Challenge, it quickly spread through the small town.

Wrona: I saw it on Facebook when Jeanette tagged me. She said I had 24 hours to complete it. I believe I did it the very next day and then tagged some friends, and now everyone is tagging friends, and then more friends. And it went off from there.

It was inevitable the Ice Bucket Challenge would spread throughout Westchester County. And, as we now know, it hopped on the Cross County Parkway and made the seven-mile trip to Yonkers. To Pat Quinn.

Senerchia: There were a lot of people from my town doing it and sending it to people who knew Pat Quinn. Danielle Marcelle is one of the people I know who sent it over to him.

Pat Quinn has a charitable foundation called “Quinn for the Win,” and on its website is a quote that minces no words: “My name is Patrick Quinn. My life changed on March 8, 2013. I was diagnosed with ALS. Let the battle begin.” Born and raised in Yonkers, Quinn attended Iona Preparatory School, where he played basketball, and Iona College, where he developed a passion for rugby. He graduated in 2006 with a degree in criminal justice and was working in computer sales on Wall Street as well as taking police and fire civil service exams when he was diagnosed. According to his family, he was accepted by the New York State Police Academy shortly after his diagnosis. Although sometimes referred to as “Pat Quinn Jr.,” his actual name is Patrick Ryan Quinn. His father is Patrick Liam Quinn.

Pat Quinn, interviewed through EyeGaze technology: Someone who grew up in the same building as me in Yonkers had moved to Pelham and brought the video to my attention. Shortly after, a friend of mine from grade school was challenged and said he was taking it in my honor. This is when things got really interesting on my end.

The someone who grew up in the same building as Pat was Danielle Marcelle.

Rosemary Quinn, Pat’s mother: Danielle and her family, they lived on the second floor, Apartment 2F, and we lived on the third floor, Apartment 3F. We lived right over them. Her brother Nick, he’s a correctional officer now, he hung out with Pat all the time, with the three Campbell brothers. They lived right upstairs from us in 4F. And there was one more, my nephew Matt. As they got older they called themselves the Halley Street Gang.

Marcelle: I was friends with Pat’s aunt and uncle, and his cousins were like my best friends, and they are to this day still, 40 years later. As for Jeanette Senerchia, we moved to Pelham about 15 or 16 years ago, and the Senerchias were a stable, awesome family in our new town. They help everybody out, and they’re very well-known. And I was in a bowling league that Anthony’s mother and Jeanette were in.

The friend of Pat’s from grade school was Brian Moroni.

Brian Moroni: We both went to St. John the Baptist School in Yonkers. He was a year younger than me. I don’t know the (Senerchia) family. Somebody that I knew who knew them had nominated me to do the Ice Bucket Challenge. My first thought was obviously to bring this to the attention of Pat Quinn. It was in the early stages of what was happening to him, and I wanted to bring awareness to his fight for ALS.

Marcelle: When Patrick was diagnosed, I went up to Jeanette and asked if she would speak to the family, and I was able to help connect them because I knew they had been going through it much longer. Both families have been so supportive. I remember hearing about Anthony’s mother, Rose, going over to her son’s house and cooking his favorite food and putting it in a blender for him.

Pat actually had been made aware of the Ice Bucket Challenge a few weeks earlier, but its potential had not yet been realized.

Pat Quinn: You should talk to my friend Frank Russo to show how long people were taking the Challenge before it got to ALS. He did a Challenge at the end of June or early July, did it for me, and it simply didn’t catch on. He really hates that. It’s pretty funny.

Frank Russo: It became a viral sensation, and I called Pat one day later on, and I said, “Remember when we did this, and it was a just a knock-around thing?” He said, “Well, in my mind you’re always going to be the first one who did it for me.”

Patrick Liam Quinn (Pat’s father): There was no one thing I could put my finger on. It was just suddenly taking off in our world, and every few minutes you’d check Facebook, this guy is doing it, that guy is doing it.

Rosemary Quinn: The first thing you need to know is that I wasn’t doing Facebook or any of that, never have been. My niece, she lives in my building, she called me and she said, “You have got to see what’s going on on Facebook.” So she came down, and we got on the computer, and we could see all these people from all over, reaching out.

Pat Quinn: I’d wake up every morning to see who did their challenges, if it got bigger, and it would be an all-day affair! It was by far the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. The whole world is on Facebook all the time, but it’s always a mixed bag on our newsfeed. When the Ice Bucket Challenge took off, the entire newsfeed was filled with ice bucket videos. It was incredible to see ALS awareness popping up all over the world!

Rosemary Quinn: The friends my son was able to connect with, from grade school on up, from all walks of life, was amazing. I believe the loyalty he had for them was what they were just giving back in return.

As Ice Bucket Challenge after Ice Bucket Challenge was being posted, Pat Quinn watched as many of them as time allowed. The biggest names in sports were taking part — LeBron James, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Tiger Woods. Even now, five years later, he has trouble choosing a favorite.

Pat Quinn: That is a question I have been asked a lot, and I feel like my answer is never the same. I really like sports and to see Michael Jordan, Derek Jeter and the USA basketball team do it was amazing! I’m also a huge North Carolina Tar Heels basketball fan, so to see the team take the Challenge meant a lot to me. Sorry, it’s not one.

Aging celebrities get botox to avoid wrinkles, I got botox directly into my salivary glands to ease the amount of excess saliva in my mouth. That is ALS. It's a monster that never stops attacking. If you see me, don't be surprised if I look younger! 🤣#Quinn4theWin #FightingALS pic.twitter.com/paLB4vKHgG

— Pat Quinn (@PQuinnfortheWin) May 3, 2019

Pat and his “Quinn for the Win” associates began sending out their own Ice Bucket Challenges. But Pat also wanted to get the Ice Bucket Challenge to Pete Frates, the former Boston College baseball captain who had been diagnosed with ALS in 2012. Raised in Beverly, Mass., Frates was a standout hockey and baseball player at St. John’s Preparatory School who then followed in the footsteps of his parents, John and Nancy Frates, by attending BC. One of the highlights of his career took place on April 25, 2006, when he homered into the visiting bullpen at Fenway Park against Harvard in the annual Beanpot Tournament. He was just 6 years old when he made the first of many childhood trips to Fenway, but as he later told the Boston Herald’s Tony Massarotti, there was one memorable day when his family stopped at the famed Hilltop Steakhouse on the way to the ballpark, and “I threw up on the way down and didn’t think I was going to make it.” He did make it. Because it was Fenway. He graduated from BC in 2006. At the time of his diagnosis, he was working in sales for Humana Inc. and playing for the Lexington Blue Sox of the Intercity Baseball League, a storied amateur circuit in Greater Boston. He and Julie Kowalik, also a BC grad, were married on June 1, 2013.

Patrick Liam Quinn: Pat and Pete had a relationship as soon as Pat got diagnosed. He went on the internet and found that Pete was another ALS patient, pretty much the same age as him, so he reached out to him on social media, and they connected right away. They became very great friends, and this was a year prior to the Ice Bucket Challenge.

Pat Quinn’s relationship with Frates led to a chance meeting in spring 2013 with Phil and Tim Holden, twins from Westwood, Mass., who had been BC roommates with Frates and were then living in New York City.

Tim Holden: My wife and I were hosting a fundraiser for the ALS Association of New York’s Young Professional Group. We were all having some beers, and a young guy walked up to us and said his name was Pat Quinn.

Phil Holden: It was at a place called Brinkley’s in Manhattan. We asked him what his connection to ALS was, and he said he’d just been diagnosed a couple of months before. I was floored because, of course, he didn’t show any of the real signs of the disease.

Tim Holden: He said his name, and it didn’t mean anything to me at the time. When he explained that he had ALS, it certainly struck a pretty significant chord, given how close it was to Pete’s diagnosis. That’s how the relationship started.

When Pat Quinn posted information about the Ice Bucket Challenge on Facebook, he tagged Frates. He also tagged the Holden twins, who responded by posting Ice Bucket Challenge videos.

Phil Holden: We had stayed in touch, and when I saw it on his Facebook page, I reached out to him because I wanted to figure out exactly what it was. And he explained it to me and said it was in his network, and he wanted it to get to Pete’s network, get it up to Boston.

Pat Quinn: I knew it had to get to Pete. My network made it pop, but the perfect place for it to continue growing was with Pete and Boston. When Tim Holden took the challenge in a “Quinn for the Win” T-shirt and Boston College shorts, the Ice Bucket Challenge made its way up the East Coast. It was about to explode!

Tim Holden: It was in front of my apartment building in New York City with my wife filming. I actually had on two T-shirts. There was a “Team Frate Train” T-shirt, and under that was a “Quinn for the Win” T-shirt. I poured two buckets over my head. After the first bucket, I revealed the “Quinn for the Win” T-shirt. That was a way of trying to connect both of those networks of people and trying to grow it and get Pat’s group attached to the “Team Frate Train” movement.

Phil Holden: I sent (my Challenge) to Pete’s father and brother, and also to Jay Connelly, who was another one of our roommates at Boston College.

Jay Connelly: At that point, we were deep into ALS events. I got Challenges from both Holdens. I then nominated five people, and one of them was Andy Frates.

Andrew Frates, brother of Pete Frates: That’s it, exactly. Through Pete’s connections in New York, it got up to Boston, and from Jay Connelly, it got to me.

Pete Frates, meanwhile, although reluctant to take an Ice Bucket Challenge because of health concerns, was monitoring the sudden flurry of Facebook posts.

Andrew Frates: He didn’t challenge people at first because he knew if it caught on with his friends and family, it would then have the chance to go viral and create awareness for the ALS community.

But Pete’s message to Andrew, in so many words, was: Get this thing out.

John Frates, father of Pete Frates: Andrew was at a retreat up in Vermont with St. John’s Prep. He called me and said, “Hey, I’m going to be tagging you, and Pete wants you to do this. Something called the Ice Bucket Challenge.” I had no idea what he was talking about. He said, “I’m sending you a video link. Just watch it and do exactly as I say.” And then he says, “When you tag your three people, you have to use two of Pete’s friends, and then you can have a wild card and do one on your own. And you have 24 hours.” What?

Andrew Frates: I don’t talk very sternly to my father like that, but there was a sense of urgency around this. He had just joined Facebook probably six months before, so I knew he had no idea what social media was, what tagging meant, and the rules of these kind of challenges that were kicking around the internet a little bit before the Ice Bucket Challenge. I had to give him clear directions as he’s 30 years my senior and not the best with technology, and I wanted to make it as simple as possible.

Julie Frates, wife of Pete Frates: Pete was in his chair at his computer, and I was on the couch with my computer, and we were seeing it on Facebook for the first time together. I’m thinking this is cute and cool, and Pete’s already got his mind rolling, and he’s thinking on a totally different track than I was. He was thinking way bigger and better than I was.

Nancy Frates, mother of Pete Frates: (After his diagnosis) Pat had written an email to Pete, basically saying, “Hi, I’m you.” So that’s how that happened. … He came up to visit, I think it was April of 2013, and Pete told him, “I need you to go out and tell every person you know, we have to educate people about this disease.” That’s when Pat built “Quinn for the Win.” So when Pat saw this Ice Bucket Challenge, his “Quinn for the Win” out in Westchester took hold of it and started doing it. But he knew the ticket was to get it to Pete, and that’s where the whole Ice Bucket started with BC.

Pat Quinn: Around the time of the Ice Bucket Challenge, Pete and I were talking pretty often. He was my guy. … We were loving the Ice Bucket Challenge videos starting to build momentum. I don’t remember which video, but I believe I tagged Pete at some point to bring it more to his attention. By the next time we talked, August 3rd and 4th, I was telling him how I knew he would take it to another level because Matt Ryan and the Bruins had participated already! He told me it was all my fault! We were really enjoying the moment.

Pete Frates had weighed in on July 31. While explaining he wouldn’t be doing an Ice Bucket Challenge himself — “ice water and ALS are a bad mix,” he wrote — he provided a video of himself bobbing his head back and forth to the beat of “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice. He also nominated several people to do the Challenge, including his wife, Julie, Patriots receiver Julian Edelman and Atlanta Falcons (and former Boston College) quarterback Matt Ryan.

John Frates: Now this is when Pete was slowing down and needing a lot of recovery time. The energy units were dwindling. And yet when I did the Ice Bucket Challenge, I came home at 4 o’clock in the afternoon that day, when he would normally have a nap. I had everything all set up in the backyard, with a wheelbarrow and a platform, and I’m going to do my challenge because I saw what Andrew did, and I thought I could do something better than that. I looked around, I saw that wheelbarrow, and I’m gonna fill that thing up with ice water and have Guy Lucien, Pete’s caregiver at the time, bring Pete out to watch me because I know he gets a big laugh any time I do stupid things, especially when there’s a chance I might be harming myself. But it wasn’t good enough for Pete because in the video what I failed to show was the ice water going into the wheelbarrow. He felt it could have been hot water or lukewarm water, and therefore I was cheating. So I had to go down to the convenience store, grab a ton of ice and come back and this time put the bags of ice in the wheelbarrow while it’s being taped and do it again.

John Frates tagged two of Pete’s longtime friends, Tommy Haugh and Steve Gath, and his brother-in-law, Art Cronin.

John Frates: So now, with all this going on, it’s inside Pete’s network, and those guys could do whatever they wanted with it. They’re all young guys, they’re all lunatics, they’re all creative as hell, and they’re all going to do some wild and crazy things. So for the next two or three, possibly four days in a row, his buddies are doing this Ice Bucket thing like crazy. The last time I heard Pete with a guttural, full-on belly laugh was watching him watch his buddies do this insane Ice Bucket Challenge. They were tagging other buddies, sure, but they were also sending the videos to him. I think there were 500, 550 of them done just in Pete’s network, and it was so beautiful for him to see them and to see him laugh. What jumped out to me was the creativity of the individuals. It was a peek inside who you are, a peek inside your soul. And it was really just for his entertainment. But until Pete sat and wrote that Facebook post, by then he was using Tobii (eye-tracking technology), asking Edelman, (the Bruins’ Milan) Lucic and other big, popular people to do it, he knew it would get to them. That, I think, is what catapulted it.

Connelly: You look back at the timeline on Facebook, and it was amazing. I nominate my father-in-law who nominates my cousin, and then I look, and I see that El Pres (David Portnoy) from Barstool is in there, and then there’s Jimmy Preston “The One Man Thrill Ride.” And everyone who was doing it had a story similar to that as it was taking off from every branch that it was attached to.

Meanwhile, Nancy Frates sent emails to Phil Stacey, sports editor of the local Salem News, and Kelley Tuthill, a veteran news reporter at WCVB-TV in Boston.

Nancy Frates: I wrote to them because I just had a feeling this thing was going to be something even bigger.

Phil Stacey: Pete’s one of us. He’s from the North Shore, and he’s somebody that virtually all of my readers know and can identify with. But when Nancy first let me know about this Ice Bucket Challenge, I can’t say that I had the foresight that she did that it would take off.

Stacey’s article appeared in the Aug. 1, 2014, edition. He noted Boston Bruins player Gregory Campbell had taken the Ice Bucket Challenge, and he pointed out the creative steps some people had taken to complete the task: “Pete’s uncle Arthur Cronin tops that list, having turned his Ice Bucket Challenge into making himself into a human Bloody Mary (complete with tomato juice, then celery at the end).”

Art Cronin: My daughter filmed it with me, and it was probably just before 6 a.m, sunrise. So I was thinking, “Why not start the day with a nice Bloody Mary?” I just wanted to be as unique as possible.

Kelley Tuthill was on vacation, but the Frates family was contacted by her co-worker Jorge Quiroga. His forte was breaking news.

Nancy Frates: He was the first traditional news person to give us a phone call about the Ice Bucket Challenge, other than Phil. So he comes out, and, really this is the greatest story, he walks through the door, and he’s kind of looking like he got the bottom of the barrel — that’s just my opinion, now that I’ve met thousands of news reporters. The first thing out of his mouth is, “Mr. and Mrs. Frates, I’m here to talk about this Ice Bucket Challenge thing, but I need to tell you something right up front.” I’m like, “Yeah, sure.” He says, “I don’t do schtick.” So right when he said that it kind of confirmed what I was thinking. He was like, “Great, I have to go do this schtick story.”

Jorge Quiroga: She’s right. I like having fun, but I’m not a guy who likes to do schticks.

Nancy Frates: Well, he comes in and meets us all, and we basically tell him the story of our family, about Pete, and he’s seeing us all interact. We bring him to see Pete, and he was sitting at his computer, typing with his eyes, and it’s, “Hi, Jorge, nice to meet you, thank you for coming,” and so on.

Quiroga: When I met them, and I heard the story, and when I met Pete and when I met Julie, I suddenly realized I’m going to do this. I thought the cause was unbelievable, I thought theywere unbelievable. But I also wanted to come back to the station with a dry shirt.

Nancy Frates: Jorge turns to me and says, “I assume you have a dryer in this house.” And then he takes his jacket off, and I look and he’s wearing this designer shirt; it’s probably worth more than my entire wardrobe put together.

Quiroga: I have to tell you, it wasn’t very expensive. It was a low-budget shirt. My uniform is dark jeans, button-down shirt, blazer.

Nancy Frates: Next thing I know they’re in the backyard — Pete, Jorge, John — filling up ice buckets and they do the Ice Bucket Challenge. He comes in, and he wants to look exactly like he did when he arrived at the house. He said, “I’m going to edit the story, I’m going to play it, and the anchors are going to lose their minds when they see that I did this.” He wasn’t just all in, he was the way all in.

Quiroga: I got my shirt all wet, and I changed into a polo I always have with me in my go-to bag. They put the wet shirt in the dryer, and I went outside to write the piece, and my photographer edited it while the shirt was in the dryer. When we finished, the shirt was dry, and I came back to the station looking just like I did when I left. When it went on the air, the look on (the anchors’) faces, the surprise, the shock, it was beautiful.

Nancy Frates: And now it’s on TV in Boston, it’s in the papers, it’s on the internet. It’s really everywhere. It was really starting to take off. It was magic. It was literally watching magic. It was exploding. Everyone was setting up their own thing and challenging three other people to do it. And once somebody did it, you had to get in the game. It was friends; it was family. The St. John’s Prep community and the Boston College community really took hold of it. The first high-profile person I remember doing it was Julian Edelman.

Julian Edelman: Pete and I had a mutual friend who knew about it. The Patriots were actually in Virginia at the time. We were doing a joint practice with the Washington Redskins, and they explained the story of Pete and asked if I would do it, and I said, “Yeah, I’ll definitely do it.”

For Edelman, it wasn’t as simple as grabbing a bucket of ice and pressing the little red button on an iPhone.

Edelman: It started with coach Belichick because I had to check with him before I could do it. He’s a pretty big stickler when it comes to doing anything on the grounds, non-Patriots work-oriented things. And he gave me the OK, and we went out there, and we did the tape to help with the cause.

Nancy Frates: And then Rob Manfred did it! He had just been elected commissioner of Major League Baseball.

Rob Manfred: It was literally a week after I had been elected in Baltimore. (The Ice Bucket Challenge) was really an important moment, first because of baseball’s sort of long association with ALS, so people were really excited to be involved with the cause, but secondly, it was an opportunity for us to bond as an organization. We literally went out on Park Avenue and it was virtually everybody in the office. It was symbolic that our first thing that we did as a group after I was elected was something that’s related to the history and the tradition of the game. And it demonstrated baseball’s commitment to certain causes. I was aware of the (challenges). They were popping up on my news feed. But there were a couple of employees who were really tuned in to what was going on from the very beginning.

Seeking guidance before acting, officials from Major League Baseball contacted Boston College baseball head coach Mike Gambino before doing the Ice Bucket Challenge.

Mike Gambino: They put a lot of effort into this. Mike Teevan from Major League Baseball called, and he made it clear the commissioner’s office was going to get involved. But they wanted to know more. They wanted to know everything about Pete. And then you turn on the TV, and everyone in Major League Baseball’s front office is wearing ALS shirts doing the Ice Bucket Challenge.

Manfred: I was amused by (MLB chief baseball officer and Hall of Fame manager) Joe Torre getting the buckets full of cold water. Joe’s pretty game, but I can also tell you he didn’t seem too excited about that cold water.

Nancy Frates: I woke up one morning to a series of texts from my two sisters. They were both texting “J.T., J.T., J.T.” Justin Timberlake had done it. He was, I would say, the first high-level, crazy-world celebrity to do it.

Justin Timberlake posted his Ice Bucket Challenge to YouTube on Aug. 11. Leonardo DiCaprio did the Ice Bucket Challenge. Martha Stewart did the Ice Bucket Challenge. Oprah, Eminem, Conan O’Brien and The Rock did the Ice Bucket Challenge. So did Will Smith, Miley Cyrus, Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Lopez, Kevin Hart, Emma Stone, Jimmy Kimmel and Kermit the Frog. Patrick Stewart. William Shatner. George Takei. And a for-real space traveler, Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11.

John Frates: If Nancy gets to pick her favorite, which is J.T., Justin Timberlake, who she and her sisters were screaming and raving about, for me it would be Paul Bissonnette of the Phoenix Coyotes. He’s the hockey player who rented a helicopter to scoop up some glacial ice water, go up to the top of some incredible mountain range and have the entire thing dumped on this guy. In his underwear. And it wasn’t just underwear. It was like a Speedo. It was crazy. And from what I heard, the production costs of all that were donated by Hollywood people he happened to know. Everyone of a certain sports bent loves that one.

Craig Adams, a friend of Pete Frates who had played with the Pittsburgh Penguins, challenged Penguins star Sidney Crosby.

Nancy Frates: And when Sidney Crosby did it, Canada did it. It was really taking off in professional sports with all the athletes who were doing it.

Edelman: It was a willingness to be aware of ALS and what’s going on with that. It was pretty cool to see it taking off the way it was.

On Aug. 15, Microsoft founder Bill Gates responded to a challenge by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg by posting an Ice Bucket Challenge that, naturally, made use of a cleverly designed dumping gizmo. An over-the-shoulder shot shows Gates watching Zuckerberg’s Challenge, after which he turns to a drafting board to design the instrument of his response. Next, he is shown creating his contraption … and then using it. Surprise, surprise: It works magnificently.

Patrick Liam Quinn: I think we reached the pinnacle of media attention when Bill Gates did it, the way he did it. Someone like that does it, and it’s wildfire.

Now everybody was doing the Ice Bucket Challenge.

Dave McGillivray, race director, Boston Marathon: I did the Ice Bucket Challenge at the Falmouth Road Race. I crossed the finish line, and Meb Keflezighi, winner of the 2014 Boston Marathon, was waiting for me. And he and I did it right there at the finish line in front of thousands of people.

Jon “Boog” Sciambi, baseball announcer, ESPN: I lost one of my closest childhood friends, Tim Sheehy, to ALS. We grew up together in New York City. He was diagnosed in ’05, died in ’07. I’d been participating in helping to run an ALS charity called Project Main Street since Tim was diagnosed. I later met Pete’s family at the 2014 World Series in Kansas City. I’ve been connected with them ever since.

Cyd Zeigler, editor, Outsports.com: I did it at the 2014 Gay Games in Cleveland. A friend of mine, one of our very first Outsports.com readers, Mark Kari, had ALS. And when he first told me he had it, I didn’t know much about ALS. When the Ice Bucket Challenge came up, I figured it was a good way to bring attention to ALS and also because it was a good chance to surround myself with a bunch of hot swimmers.

Bill Catherall, beekeeper, Beaverton, Ore.: My YouTube channel is all about beekeeping, and I didn’t want to do something totally off-topic, so I made a beekeeper’s version of an Ice Bucket Challenge. We were having bad weather that day anyway, and I couldn’t make any beekeeping videos, and I went ahead and did the Challenge in my beekeeper suit. I think it helped keep me a little warmer but (the water) hit me full in the face, and that was pretty chilling.

Tim Sinclair-Smith, park director, Saskatoon Forestry Farm Park & Zoo: Our (zookeepers) used a tractor. It was fantastic. These are people who have a love of community, and that’s why they’re in the work they’re in. And what better way to get across the message of community than by participating in the Ice Bucket Challenge?

Pete Frates had put off doing an actual Ice Bucket Challenge of his own because of his health issues. When he finally agreed to do so, the big event took place on Aug. 14 — in front of the Green Monster at his beloved Fenway Park. His entire family was in attendance, as were Red Sox players Will Middlebrooks, David Ross and Dustin Pedroia, manager John Farrell and team mascot Wally the Green Monster.

Will Middlebrooks, former Red Sox third baseman: I had met Pete during spring training, and I knew his story. And now, being there that day to see him do the Ice Bucket Challenge, it was as though he was coming full circle. I knew he had hit a home run at Fenway Park when he was in college, and that’s a dream for anyone growing up in New England, where Fenway is almost like heaven for baseball.

One small problem: Nobody brought an ice bucket. The situation was addressed by fetching a stand-in from the third-base dugout. Originally a container for Giants Sunflower Seeds, it had been enjoying a second career for use by clubhouse employees to tote various items to the visiting team’s dugout; now it had truly hit the big time, earning a supporting role in Pete Frates’ Ice Bucket Challenge. With an ESPN crew recording the event for a feature it was doing on Frates and the Ice Bucket Challenge, Frates’ wife, Julie, eight months pregnant, did the dousing.

Julie Frates: To be totally honest, when I did it I immediately thought it was way too much water. And I panicked because it took Pete’s breath away.

Nancy Frates: I can’t watch that Ice Bucket Challenge. Pete had said it’s really not a good idea for ALS patients in August to do an Ice Bucket Challenge because the motor neurons under their skin are dying, and they lose their ability to regulate their temperature, and if you’re experiencing respiratory problems, and then they pour ice water over you, it’s not good. If you watch that infamous Ice Bucket Challenge, and if you watch Pete’s face, you can see him gasp for air.

Julie Frates: You can see in all the pictures, right away I’m huddled over with Andrew because it had taken Pete’s breath away, and he’s in distress. Meanwhile, everyone’s elated and cheering and happy, and I’m in full panic mode, thinking, “Oh my God, what have we just done.” But in typical Pete fashion, he was laughing and smiling two seconds later. The panic lasted just two seconds.

John Frates: Two weeks later, on Aug. 31, Lucy was born. Pete and Julie’s baby arrived early. It was the exclamation point to a magical month.

Labor Day came and went. The weather turned cool. The NFL, NHL and NBA seasons began, baseball season ended. Members of the Frates family — but not Pete, unable to make the trip — took part in a ceremony before Game 2 of the World Series at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, an event that may be viewed, if only symbolically, as the end of the Ice Bucket Challenge. But it had forever changed the lives of Anthony Senerchia Jr., Pat Quinn and Pete Frates, whose efforts on behalf of ALS awareness continued. They became ALS rock stars. And their family members, too, emerged as ambassadors, spokespeople, educators — something that was impressive in its own right but extraordinary when one considers the 24/7 responsibilities when caring for an ALS patient. Speaking at an ALS event in Canada one year after the Ice Bucket Challenge, Pat Quinn said, “What happened last year was amazing. But it was only a start.” When it will end, how it will end, is for future historians to explore. Today’s historians, however, recognize the importance of the Ice Bucket Challenge. On Nov. 29, 2016, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History accepted the gray bucket Jeanette Senerchia had used for her Ice Bucket Challenge, adding it to a “Giving in America” display that “looks at the history of philanthropy’s role in shaping the United States.” In 2017, the Giants Sunflower Seeds container Pete Frates used for his Ice Bucket Challenge, along with a cap and glove from his playing days at BC, went on display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Calamity McEntire: You look at everything that happened, and it makes you smile. We just hope that somewhere down the line, whether it’s the millions of dollars raised for ALS or in the Kay Yow Cancer Fund the thousands that we raised for them, that it impacts someone in a positive manner from that research. And to have had a little fun along the way while doing it, it brought a lot of smiles to a lot of people’s faces and it impacted people that way.

Jeanette Senerchia: It was just something that organically happened. It was the right time of year, it was warm, and people loved my husband. They really did. He was a good guy. And because he was such a good guy everyone wanted to be part of something like this.

Patrick Liam Quinn: There are always things written where numbers are incorrect or where people are ignorant just how it started. There was no organized (effort) at first. It was all in the moment, trying to figure out how to maximize its potential. But what it really came down to in the beginning is that Anthony, Pat and Pete were young men battling a disease, and Pat and Pete are still battling it, and they shouldn’t be. And people rallied behind these guys.

Rosemary Quinn: When we went down to Johns Hopkins (in Baltimore) for the diagnosis, and then, coming home, the longest ride you’d ever want to imagine in your life, and the quietness on his part, and then, after a few weeks, he said to me, “Since Lou Gehrig’s speech, there’s been nothing out there, there’s no awareness.” And I think he felt this was his mission to do something about that. That’s what the Ice Bucket Challenge did. That’s when he really put himself out there — “Here I am, let me tell you about it, you need to know what this is.”

Pat Quinn: It definitely doesn’t feel like five years. It gave me a platform to make a difference, and I have been pretty busy ever since. So, more like it was yesterday because I can remember how unbelievable it was but significant time has obviously passed because I was still walking and talking at that time. This disease is very humbling.

Nancy Frates: When I first saw the Ice Bucket Challenge floating around the internet, not for ALS, the first thing it reminded me of, because we’re a sports family, was how the winning coach gets the Gatorade shower. I thought, “Wow, that’s a really neat symbol of victory.” That’s how I’ll always see the Ice Bucket Challenge.

John Frates: Nancy said it signifies victory, it signifies Gatorade at the end of the game. It’s the Ice Bucket signifying victory over the disease. Part of me says, “Yes, that’s right.” But I think of it as having a religious undertone. You’re cleansing yourself, you’re absolving yourself, you’re somewhat ridding the body of this terrible disease. People will look back on this and say it was a social media miracle. But a social media miracle is still a miracle.

(Top photo: John Blanding / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)