Car show in Lucedale raises money for St. Jude children with cancer

LUCEDALE, Miss. — An annual car show will fill downtown Lucedale on Saturday to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, bringing rows of polished cars, motorcycles and trucks to Main Street for a cause that has deep roots in this George County town. It is the fifth year the Blacktop Posse Motorcycle Club has hosted the event, and the 2025 edition carries a name chosen with care: “Brandon’s Thunder on Main Street,” in memory of Brandon Murrah, a St. Jude patient who beat cancer three times before he died last October.

Organizer Joe Funderburk said the club’s 15 members have raised $272,000 for St. Jude over 12 years as a club. That total, built one show, one ride and one fundraiser at a time, places the small-town club among the most dedicated grassroots supporters of the Memphis hospital in the region, and the members’ commitment has outlasted the turnover and changes that dissolve many volunteer organizations.

The dedication to Brandon Murrah gives this year’s show a personal dimension. Murrah’s story, a local child who fought cancer at St. Jude three separate times and won each battle before the disease finally took him, is the kind of story that binds a community to a cause. Families in Lucedale and across George County knew his name, and naming the show for him tells every attendee what the day is really about.

Six children from George and Greene counties are current patients at the Memphis hospital, a fact that keeps the fundraiser’s purpose immediate for everyone in the crowd. The drive from Lucedale to Memphis is a long one for any family, made longer by a child’s treatment schedule, and the knowledge that neighbors are making that journey now is part of what draws the community to Main Street each year.

How the Show Works

Registration before Saturday is $20. On-site registration opens at 3 p.m. and costs $25. Any car, motorcycle or truck can enter and must be parked by 4 p.m. Awards will be announced at 7:30 p.m. The format gives entrants the afternoon to show their vehicles while the street fills with spectators, with judging culminating in the evening awards ceremony that caps the show.

The awards ceremony at 7:30 p.m. traditionally brings the whole street to a stop, with trophies presented in front of the vehicles that earned them and applause running down the block. Classes are broad enough that everyday drivers and full-blown restorations alike can take home hardware, which is part of the show’s appeal for families who enter a beloved truck or a first project car alongside the serious hobbyists. Spectators line the barricades for the ceremony, then spill into the food trucks and open storefronts as Second Saturday carries the evening on.

The open-entry rule, welcoming any car, motorcycle or truck rather than restricting the show to particular years or classes, is a signature of the Blacktop Posse approach. Small-town shows thrive on variety: a restored pickup parked beside a lowrider, a weekend motorcycle beside a family’s daily driver. Everybody who pays the registration fee gets a spot on Main Street, and the crowd gets a full cross-section of Gulf Coast vehicle culture rather than a narrowly judged competition.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, founded in Memphis, treats children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases regardless of a family’s ability to pay, and its research has driven much of the improvement in childhood cancer survival rates over the past half-century. That mission is why fundraisers like the Lucedale show matter: hospitals and families across the Southeast send children to Memphis, and community dollars support both the treatment and the research that shapes care everywhere else. For rural counties like George and Greene, where current patients are enrolled in care, the connection to St. Jude is not abstract; it runs through friends, church members and schoolmates.

The Blacktop Posse’s 12-year fundraising history began with the kind of informal idea that launches most small-town traditions, riders and gearheads deciding to point their hobby at a cause. The $272,000 the club has raised over that span has been built in increments, annual shows, ride-in donations, raffles and the slow accumulation of community trust that keeps people coming back and bringing friends.

Second Saturday Brings the Town Together

The event coincides with the Second Saturday event hosted by the Downtown Merchants of Lucedale, with vendors and nine food trucks set up alongside Main Street restaurants and storefronts open from 5 to 8 p.m. The pairing of the car show with the merchants’ monthly event turns the day into a full-evening festival, with the street open to strolling, shopping and supper long after the first vehicles are parked.

Lucedale’s Main Street provides the kind of setting that makes small-town car shows memorable, a compact grid of storefronts and shade trees where a hundred vehicles create an instant event and every entrant can find their display within a short walk. The Downtown Merchants of Lucedale’s Second Saturday series was built on the same logic, giving residents a monthly reason to come downtown, and the overlap with the car show multiplies the crowd for both. Vendors set up along the route, the nine food trucks cover everything from fair food to plate lunches, and the restaurants and storefronts staying open from 5 to 8 p.m. keep the evening moving after the awards are handed out.

The timing of the awards at 7:30 p.m. lets the show flow naturally into the Second Saturday evening. Entrants hear the results of the judging while the food trucks hit their stride, and spectators who arrive after work still catch the ceremony, the vendors and the open storefronts. Organizers have refined that schedule over five years, learning how a show, a merchant event and a Saturday night crowd can share the same few blocks without crowding each other out.

The memory of Brandon Murrah hangs over the whole evening. Families who watched his fight against cancer, the three remissions and the final loss last October, see his name on the show’s banner and understand that the money raised Saturday has faces attached to it. The six children from George and Greene counties currently in treatment at St. Jude are the next chapter of the same story, and the Blacktop Posse’s members talk about the fundraising in exactly those terms, neighbors helping neighbors through the hardest seasons a family can face.

For visitors traveling in from across south Mississippi, the show offers a look at Lucedale at its best: a county seat of a few thousand people filling its Main Street with chrome, music, food and purpose. The $25 day-of registration fee goes to the cause, the awards reward the vehicles, and the real prize, the $272,000 raised over 12 years and whatever Saturday adds to it, belongs to the children the community has adopted as its own.

St. Jude’s model of care is what makes the local connection so powerful. Families whose children are treated in Memphis pay nothing for treatment, travel, housing or food, which removes the financial catastrophe that once accompanied a childhood cancer diagnosis. That policy is funded in large part by donations, from national partners down to car shows in towns like Lucedale, and it means that every dollar raised on Main Street translates directly into care for children like the six currently enrolled from George and Greene counties. Rural families in south Mississippi, often hours from major medical centers, rely on that lifeline more than most.

Motorcycle clubs have long been among the most dependable grassroots fundraisers for children’s hospitals, and the Blacktop Posse’s 15 members have turned that tradition into a 12-year commitment. Club fundraising of this kind is measured in more than totals: the relationships built with hospital staff, the families who return year after year to say thank you, and the awareness raised in a rural county about what St. Jude offers. When a family in George County hears a child’s diagnosis, the first phone calls are often to people who have made the Memphis drive before, and the club’s years of visibility have made sure those calls have somewhere to go.

Brandon Murrah’s three victories over cancer at St. Jude showed the hospital’s capabilities in the most personal way possible for a small town, and his death last October showed why the work cannot stop. Naming the show “Brandon’s Thunder on Main Street” keeps his story in front of every spectator and entrant, and the word “thunder,” borrowed from the rumble of engines the club loves, ties the memorial to the machines that fill the street. His family’s presence at the show, like the families of current patients, is part of what makes the fifth-annual edition feel less like an event and more like a duty.