For Judy and David Fried, the annual pilgrimage to Maine each fall for the New England Parkinson’s Ride is a family reunion. After riding together, family and friends gather at the Fried’s Airbnb. Judy’s two siblings are there with their families, as are the couple’s three children and their families. The one person not there in body is Carl “Skunky” Stoeckel—Judy’s father, who died of Parkinson’s in 2014—but he is there in spirit. “My dad has been gone a long time. That day, we always think of dad and you feel he is riding with you. Even my kids. My kids adored him. It’s my favorite weekend of the year,” she said. Skunky, as he is affectionately known, is also there on everyone’s matching cycling shirts: bright orange and white shirts with black striped sleeves and a cartoon “skunkified” image of Carl on a bike. Judy sent a photo to an artist in Brooklyn, but didn’t tell everyone she was doing it. “I surprised everyone with the shirts. I didn’t tell them what they would look like,” she said with a smile, then added jokingly, “I think they really come for the shirts.”
Judy and David laughed as they told the story of Skunky. Carl Stoeckel was a quiet and introverted man, a pharmacist by trade, who loved his family and hated being the center of attention. He had a full head of jet-black hair, and when he started going gray, his hair turned white at the temples. This prompted his toddler granddaughter to announce he looked like a skunk and that she would call him Skunky. From then on, that was his name and all cards were addressed to “Grandma and Skunky.” “My dad would be so embarrassed,” Judy, the team captain, said of the shirts. “And Skunky was not a biker. He didn’t even own a bike, I don’t think.” The orange and white is for Ohio Northern, where Carl went to college, the first in his family to do so.
Team Skunky averages about 20 people, with a core group of family members. Over the last decade, they have raised over $300,000. David, a physician, has noticed an increase in people with Parkinson’s from over 30 years ago when he started practicing. He likes helping to find treatments, and hopefully a cure.
“There are a lot of people who have been touched by Parkinson’s Disease and who want to participate. We have team members who participate because of their family members,” David said. Last year he reached out to the CEO of Ocean State Job Lot, who is a member of their temple, as he knew the company had a philanthropic foundation. It turned out the person running the foundation had a father with Parkinson’s.
The company asked customers at all their stores for a donation at checkout for one week and then matched those dollars. The check came to over $100,000. “The funny thing was he told the guy at the foundation to make the check to David Fried’s Team, but it was corrected to Team Skunky,” David said, adding that Team Skunky is also a race sponsor.
David and Judy love everything about the ride: the atmosphere, the camaraderie and how much it has grown over the years. Judy has also experienced the ride in different ways. One year, after having surgery, she couldn’t ride, so she was pushed in one of the bike chairs by the Portland Wheelers on the 10-mile ride. This gave her a deep appreciation of having that option so everyone can participate. Usually, the Fried’s ride 50 miles. “We were not really bikers when we started doing the ride. Since that time we have become bikers. We have even gone on some bike trips,” she said. David and Judy said the excitement of the ride extends beyond the ride itself as they periodically see people wearing Team Skunky shirts around their hometown. “We tell them they are Team Skunky for life once they ride with us,” Judy said.
By Erika Alison Cohen
Erika Alison Cohen is a long-time ride participant who lost a close family member to Parkinson’s Disease. She works as a ghostwriter and book editor, with a specialty in financial writing and business memoirs. Besides cycling, she is an avid runner and co-wrote Stories from the Starting Line, a book about running in New Hampshire that came out in 2023. You can learn more about her at eacohen.com.
