The 2024 Toledo Takes on ALS beer festival will take place on August 15th, 2024 at Mud Hens Stadium in Toledo, OH. The festival will feature beer from 40 breweries, food, and more. All proceeds will benefit the Ales for ALS™ program, which supports ALS research at the ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI) through craft beer. Read on to learn the story of Steve Welling, one of the festival’s organizers who is living with ALS.
When Steve Welling was first diagnosed with ALS, he wasn’t sure how to talk about it. In 2021, he had first noticed an involuntary, uncontrollable twitch in his arm while getting a tattoo with his wife. Within a month, the spasms had become constant and spread to his other arm. Then his thighs began doing it too.
“And that's when we were introduced to the term muscle fasciculations,” he remembers, “which is a common side effect of the early stages of ALS. So, I went through all the tasting, the EMG, the CT scans, all that stuff. After about a year, they finally determined that it was ALS in June of 2022.”
The diagnosis was devastating for Steve, who is currently 39 and a father of three daughters, ages 13, 11, and eight. At first, it was something he wanted to keep private as he and his family tried to understand what ALS would mean for them.
“Health is so private,” he says. “We didn't want to do a giant announcement on social media. We kept it to ourselves for a long time. Just me, my wife, and our close family.”
The next year, however, he would find the inspiration he needed to step out as someone living with ALS and become an advocate for the disease. It started at the Toledo, OH refinery where he worked. A coworker asked Steve if he would be willing to meet with someone he knew from church who also had ALS. That person was John Schinharl.
“John and I met a couple times at a restaurant,” he says. “We’d have a drink or an appetizer and tell each other stories. It was good to hear he was going through. He liked hearing about my journey as well. It’s not that often that you run into somebody that has been diagnosed who you can bounce ideas off or talk about your background. After that meeting with John, I knew I wanted to get involved. I knew I wanted to be an advocate for ALS.”
It was through these conversations that Steve found out about Toledo Takes on ALS, a beer festival John and his wife Tracy were organizing. The festival’s mission was to raise money for Ales for ALS™, a program that works with brewers around the country to create unique beers and raise money for ALS research at the ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI). Even though the event was still in the planning stages, it was already clear that this event was going to be something special.
Originally conceived to be a small gathering at a local brewery, the Toledo community rallied around the event. By the time of the festival, on August 24th, 2023, it had expanded from one to 29 breweries. To accommodate all the people who wanted to attend, it was moved to the stadium of the Toledo Mud Hens, the local minor league baseball team. In the process, they raised more than $290,000 for Ales for ALS™, all of which went to support ALS research at ALS TDI.
Steve attended the 2023 event. He says it was, first and foremost, a great time – a festival that brought together the Toledo community and turned the Mud Hens’ stadium into an open bar for sampling delicious beer on a hot day. However, he also found inspiration in meeting others who had been affected by ALS and were involved in the fight to end it.
“It was amazing seeing people in all their different ALS t-shirts,” he says. “Our own group, we all had matching t-shirts. We saw other people with all their different ALS shirts. You get to know each other. I talked with other people, people who were strangers, but I connected with them on a deeper level after that night.”
The event will return to the Mud Hens’ stadium on Thursday, August 15th, 2024. This year, there will be more than 40 brewers, along with food, a raffle with prizes including Yeti coolers, and more. Steve will be taking on a bigger role in promoting the festival – a crucially important role, as John has taken a step back due to the challenges of his own ALS progression. Steve says it’s been difficult to step up and share his story, but he knows that his voice is important to drive home the importance of the cause they are fighting for – ending ALS.
“One of the coolest things about this festival is that it’s not just supporting one person or one family,” he says. “It's going towards research at ALS TDI to help the next person with ALS. I’ve researched a lot of different organizations since I've been diagnosed, and I feel closest to ALS TDI because I want this thing to stop. The biggest thing we can do is spread the word and try to raise money now to find treatments for the next family, to help the next dad with three daughters who is diagnosed.”
The 2024 Toledo Takes on ALS beer festival will take place on August 15th, 2024. To learn more and buy tickets, click here.
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