Game-Day Sign For Beer A Beacon For Some Very Sick Kids

AMES, IA — There’s loose-change beer money, and then there’s $225,000 — and counting — in beer money. When 24-year-old Carson King held up a sign saying his Busch Beer supply needed replenishing on ESPN's "College GameDay" broadcast from Ames Saturday, he did it as a harmless lark.

Then people began giving him money — in person, then on his Venmo account. Suddenly, his harmless lark became a beautiful, helpful sign that good people still exist. With that money coming in, and with more that poured in like beer flowing out of a double-wide tap, suddenly the wish for cash to buy suds became a gift to some very sick children.

One of the laws of the universe is that found money like that is meant to be shared. By the time he donations reached $600, he decided there was "a better purpose for it,” King told The Washington Post.

It would have been easy for King to pocket the money and hope to turn it into more. He works at Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino, and he could have spent his growing fortune at the gambling tables and slot machines.

So he turned his prank into a fundraiser for the critically and terminally ill kids at the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital.

Yes, those kids; the kids who are part of the best moment in college sports that replays every Saturday when the University of Iowa Hawkeyes play a home game. The Hawks —and everyone else at Kinnick Stadium — turn and give the kids watching from the hospital a special salute known as “The Iowa Wave.”

Time stops. Rivalries stop. Everyone turns in unison to wave at the kids in a kind, poignant moment sliced from the physical roughness of college football.

The tradition started two years ago as an empathetic gesture to tell some very sick kids watching from the hospital’s 11th floor the battles they’re fighting are more important than anything that happens on the field below. That friendly interchange gives the sick kids a momentary respite from the rigors of chemotherapy, surgeries and therapies, and for a moment, the spread of kindness makes their individual situations a little less horrible to endure.

King was wearing the scarlet and gold of the Iowa State University Cyclones at Saturday’s CyHawk college football showdown. That’s a minor, an almost inconsequential detail.

“It just goes to show that no matter if you’re a Hawkeye fan, Cyclone fan, or Grand View Viking, we’re all Iowans, and Iowans take care of each other,” King told the Des Moines Register.

When King told his mother, Dana Archer-King, that he planned to do some begging for beer money, she laughed it off.

“Great,” she told the Register of her reaction at the time, “this will be my proudest mom moment.”

Little did she know how genuinely proud she would be of her son.

“He’s not a wealthy kid by any means,” Archer-King told the Register. “I’m not sure how many 24-year-old would just give that kind of money away. We’re all so in awe of what he’s doing.”

And, even though he was mostly joking, King’s getting some free beer — a year’s worth, actually, from Busch Light. The brewer said in a tweet that it would match the donations made to the Children’s Hospital. The digital payments app Venmo, which King used to accept donations, also is matching the donations.

King, who appeared Wednesday on Scott Van Pelt’s “One Last Thing” show on ESPN, said he’s heard from people from all across Iowa and around the country. Many are current and former University of Iowa players, but he said he also received support from Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Mitch Keller, a native of Cedar Rapids.

Amy O’Deen, the hospital’s interim executive director, said in a statement Wednesday that Carson’s fundraiser “demonstrates the generosity and goodness of Iowans, uniting Cyclone and Hawkeye fans to make a difference for our kids.”