When spectators cheered on the hundreds of runners, swimmers and cyclists who took part in this year’s North Shore Triathlon Sunday, they were likely to see almost three dozen athletes brightly clothed in blue T-shirts bearing a jaunty fox logo.
The men and women wearing the shirts belong to Wilmette resident Bill Bucklew’s 33-person team, and they had a special reason for participating; each one was helping Bucklew raise money for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
Bucklew, the chief operating officer of a housewares design company, has Parkinson’s disease and has dedicated much of his time since being diagnosed in 2012 to raising money to fight the disease.
On Monday, Bucklew said his team raised more than $4,200 during the triathlon.
Bucklew has participated in all three North Shore Triathlons, but this is the largest fundraising effort he has organized for the event, he said.
His 2015 team include seven three-person relay triads, in which each person took a swimming, bicycling or running leg of the race, as well as 12 individual participants. Three of the relay teams took first, second and third in the triathlon, he said.
Several team members have Parkinson’s or have a family member who does, Bucklew said. Wilmette resident Mark Campolieto is a friend whose father has Parkinson’s.
“A year after Bill opened up about Parkinson’s, my dad was diagnosed with it,” Campolieto said, “So it hit a chord with me. … Bill has really opened people’s eyes about Parkinson’s in the community, letting you know that it doesn’t really have to hold you back.”
Another of Bucklew’s friends, Wilmette resident John Murphy, took part in this year’s team organization and echoed Campolieto’s comments.
“He’s been quite an inspiration,” he said of Bucklew. “After he said he had Parkinson’s, a lot of people would ask me how he was doing, and I’d say, ‘Look, if you followed him around for three days, you wouldn’t be able to keep up with the guy.'”
Bucklew, 46, said he was diagnosed with an early-onset version of the degenerative neurological disorder after he struggled for several years with tightness in his right leg and increasingly diminished coordination.
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The diagnosis spurred him to action, he said. He took it public as a way to raise awareness about Parkinson’s, as well as to raise money for research into what is still an incurable disorder, Bucklew said.
He joined the foundation’s Team Fox fund-raising community and – perhaps not surprisingly, given his love of running – used his participation in marathons and triathlons, and even a climb of Kenya’s Mount Kilimanjaro, to raise money.
Nicole O’Donnell, athletic director for Team Fox, a fund-raising arm of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, praised Bucklew’s dedication to raising both dollars for and awareness of the disease.
Since becoming part of the organization’s Team Fox effort in 2012, she said, he has personally raised more than $16,000 and is on track to raise even more.
“This year alone he’ll be doing three separate fundraisers,” she said, referring to Bucklew’s participation or planned participation in two other 2015 sporting events, an upstate New York endurance challenge called Rock the Ridge and the New York City Marathon. “He’s super, super involved.”
Twitter@pioneer_kathy