‘Pickleball for Pop’ raises money for Alzheimer’s research in Queens
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Participants and family at “Pickleball for Pop” held at Queens College last Saturday. Courtesy of Adam Funtleyder
By Ryan Schwach
After his father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease during the pandemic, Rockaway resident and retired public school educator Adam Funtleyder would bring his father to watch him play pickleball along the Rockaway Beach boardwalk.
“I would take him outside and just put a chair for him to sit and watch us play,” Funtleyder said. “He would like it and he would sit calmly and watch us.”
Last February, his father and lifelong music teacher Elliot Funtleyder succumbed to Alzheimer’s, and now Adam is carrying on his father’s memory through the sport he enjoyed with his father in his final years.
On Saturday, Funtleyder held the second annual “Pickleball for Pop” at Queens College, a get-together and tournament held in association with the Alzheimer’s Association which donates all its proceeds to Alzheimer’s research.
“It’s heartwarming, it's just special, and it's a way to keep my father's memory alive,” Funtleyder told the Eagle. “People are coming out to support but they're also talking about my father.”
Visitors to the event were given paddles and entered open-play or tournaments, and played the tennis-like sport which has become popular across the country, and a major pastime for Funtleyder and his family.
“Pickleball is hot now,” he said. “Everyone wants to play.”
Between the two events, which are part of the Alzheimer’s Association’s The Longest Day, which coordinates thousands of events around the world, Funtleyder, who also DJs the events under his stage name “DJ Mugsy Mugs,” says they raised over $8,000.
"We are grateful to Adam and his family and friends for organizing the Pickleball for Pop fundraiser in memory of Elliot Funtleyder,” said Lucy Denardo, director of development at the Alzheimer's Association. “Alzheimer's is becoming a treatable disease, thanks to new FDA-approved treatments. But it's not yet curable, and families are still losing their loved ones.”
“The Alzheimer's Association is driving toward our mission to end Alzheimer's, and we are only able to do that thanks to supporters like Adam,” she added.
Now, Funtleyder hopes to build on the success of the previous events.
“It was a success, now we're talking about taking it citywide,” he said, adding that he’s looking to reach out to pickleball groups in Marine Park, Flushing and Brooklyn Bridge Park. “I would like to build on it.”
On top of raising money, and having fun playing pickleball, Funtleyder says the events have let him help others who are going through the same things he went through with his father.
“I'm starting to meet people throughout the city and it's bringing people together,” he said. “It’s helping the cause, not only by raising money for research, but at my events people are starting to ask me, ‘Oh my grandmother is sick, What can I do? Who can I speak to?’ And I guide them from what I know as a peer or…somebody that went through it.”
Regardless of how much money is raised, the event is a way for Funtleyder and his family to remember Elliot.
“My father wasn’t a nice guy, a nice guy is kind to someone for their own personal gain but a good guy, which my father was, is kind to someone because he understands that is the way people deserve to be treated,” Funtleyder said.
