American Cancer Society Turns Making Strides Into Drive-Thru Celebration at Battleship Park

MOBILE, Ala. — The American Cancer Society is reimagining one of Mobile’s most familiar fall fundraisers for the pandemic era, hosting a drive-thru celebration for Making Strides Against Breast Cancer on Saturday, October 31, at Battleship Memorial Park. The event gets underway at 8 a.m., with participants encouraged to stay in their vehicles as they take part in the morning’s festivities.

The change marks a sharp departure from the event’s usual format. In a typical year, Making Strides draws thousands of walkers — many wearing pink team shirts, carrying survivor sashes and honoring loved ones — onto the grounds of the park for a morning of shared purpose. In 2020, with large gatherings curtailed across the Gulf Coast, organizers rebuilt the event so that the community spirit could survive the necessary distance: participants will remain in decorated vehicles, moving through a staged celebration along the waterfront rather than walking a route on foot.

Veteran local broadcaster Rose Ann Haven will serve as emcee for the celebration, which swaps the traditional walk format for a contact-free experience along the Mobile Bay waterfront. Haven, a familiar presence on Mobile television for years, brings to the emcee role the kind of local connection that Making Strides events have always depended on — the event succeeds, year after year, because community leaders, survivors and volunteers give it a personal face.

Pirates, pink and decorated cars

Organizers have given this year’s edition a playful theme: “Protect the Chest,” complete with pirate-themed costumes in honor of the battleship setting. The wordplay ties the fundraiser to its host site — Battleship Memorial Park, where the World War II-era USS Alabama rests in the bay — and gives teams a lighthearted outlet for the creativity that has always powered the walk’s team-spirit competition.

Attendees can also enter a car-decorating contest, turning dashboards, hoods and windows into rolling tributes to breast cancer fighters, survivors and thrivers. The contest replaces the sign-carrying, costume-wearing pageantry of the traditional walk with something suited to a stay-in-your-car format, and organizers expect team vehicles ranging from pink streamers and magnetic ribbons to full pirate regalia. Judging and prizes give the morning a bit of friendly competition, an element that keeps teams engaged and fundraising through the fall.

The Halloween date adds another layer to the theme. An October 31 celebration means costumes come naturally — pirate hats over pink wigs, decorated vehicles doubling as trick-or-treat stops — and organizers leaned into the coincidence rather than fighting it. For families who have made Making Strides an annual tradition, the holiday timing offers a way to keep the tradition alive in a year when so much else on the calendar has been canceled.

The drive-thru design answers the central challenge of fundraising during the pandemic: how to keep people engaged and giving when the gathering itself is the risk. By moving the event into vehicles, organizers preserve the parts of Making Strides that matter most — the visible community support, the honoring of survivors, the collective act of giving — while eliminating the crowding that a traditional walk would require.

What Making Strides funds

Making Strides Against Breast Cancer is the American Cancer Society’s signature breast cancer awareness campaign, raising money for research, patient support programs and free educational resources. The events began in 1993 and have grown into a national series held in hundreds of communities each fall, collectively raising hundreds of millions of dollars for the fight against breast cancer — money that funds laboratory research, early-detection outreach and direct services for patients in treatment.

The society notes that even in a year without a traditional walk, dollars raised locally stay at work across the Gulf Coast — funding rides to treatment, a 24/7 cancer helpline and lodging for patients who must travel for care. Those services take on added importance in a pandemic year, when treatment schedules have been disrupted and many patients face new barriers to the care they had already planned.

The ride program is among the most-used services the society offers locally, providing transportation for patients who cannot drive themselves to chemotherapy and radiation appointments. The 24/7 helpline connects patients, caregivers and families with trained specialists who answer questions about diagnosis, treatment options and support resources at any hour. And lodging programs give patients from south Alabama’s smaller communities — places where cancer treatment often requires long drives to Mobile or Pensacola — a place to stay near their treatment centers.

Fundraising continues through October

Participants who have not yet donated can still contribute online through the end of October. The extended giving window is a deliberate feature of this year’s redesign: with no crowd on hand to pass buckets or visit donation tents, the campaign’s success depends on online fundraising that can continue after the celebration itself, and teams are encouraged to keep soliciting pledges through the final day of the month.

Team fundraising, the engine of Making Strides in any year, looks different in a drive-thru format but follows the same logic. In ordinary years, workplaces, churches, families and survivor groups spend months holding bake sales, golf tournaments and restaurant nights to build their team totals. The pandemic has pushed much of that activity online — Facebook fundraisers, virtual raffles, business sponsorships — and organizers have adapted their team toolkits accordingly.

Breast cancer remains one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers among American women, and the American Cancer Society’s investment in the disease spans decades of research — from studies that shaped modern screening guidelines to treatments that have steadily improved survival. Locally, the awareness campaign serves another purpose: it keeps conversations about screening, early detection and support services in public view at a moment when routine medical care, including mammograms, has been postponed by many patients who avoided health facilities during the pandemic.

Health providers along the Gulf Coast have warned throughout the year that delayed screenings could mean cancers discovered at later, harder-to-treat stages, making awareness efforts in the fall of 2020 more consequential than in a typical year. The society’s message to the community pairs the fundraiser with a practical reminder: screening saves lives, and those who have postponed a mammogram are encouraged to reschedule.

A fitting venue on the bay

Battleship Memorial Park, home of the USS Alabama, sits on Mobile Bay just off Battleship Parkway and offers ample space for a safely distanced, stay-in-your-car event. The park’s grounds — which also include the submarine USS Drum, combat aircraft and military memorials honoring Alabamians who served in every conflict of the last century — give organizers room to lay out a vehicle route with staging areas, emcee platforms and checkpoint activities while keeping participants isolated in their own cars.

The park has long been a gathering place for the community’s largest outdoor events, from veterans’ ceremonies to festivals, and its waterfront setting gives Making Strides the scenic backdrop that has made the Mobile event one of the region’s most recognizable fall traditions. For the drive-thru format, the wide internal roads and open lots solve the practical problems — traffic flow, spacing, signage — that would make a park venue essential.

The military setting also resonates with the event’s cause in quieter ways. Many attendees have personal ties to the park’s mission of honoring service, and the discipline and sacrifice that theme evokes parallels the experience of patients and families living through cancer treatment. Organizers chose the venue for its space and symbolism in equal measure.

As October 31 approaches, organizers are urging participants to register online, decorate their vehicles and arrive with donations in hand — and to remember that the fight the event supports continues long after the last car leaves the park. For the survivors, fighters and thrivers the event honors, and for the patients who will rely on the society’s rides, helpline and lodging programs in the months ahead, the pink-and-pirate fleet gathering on the bay is a sign that Mobile’s commitment to the cause survived even a pandemic year.

The event also highlights the role of corporate and community sponsors who carry Making Strides year after year. Local businesses underwrite the costs of the event itself so that participant donations flow to the mission, and sponsors whose own employees have faced breast cancer often field some of the largest and most enthusiastic teams. The drive-thru format gives sponsors visible placement along the route, and organizers said sponsor support made it possible to redesign the event rather than cancel it outright.

For volunteers, the morning will still begin early. Setting up a vehicle route, emcee platform and contest checkpoints before an 8 a.m. start requires the same pre-dawn effort as any traditional walk, and the society’s local staff and volunteer committees have spent weeks mapping traffic flow and rehearsing the run of show. Volunteers will direct vehicles, distribute materials contact-free and manage the car-decorating contest from a safe distance.