Transcription of Martha Bradley & Bruce Miles for the show Sugarloafers Helping Others #220
Lisa: For people who live in Maine and are skiers, they no doubt have heard of these next 2 individuals and the events that are associated with them. Today, we’re speaking with Martha Bradley and Bruce Miles, who are the Sugarloafers behind the Sugarloaf Charity Summit.
This has been an event you’ve worked on for many, many years now.
Martha: Yes, it is.
Lisa: How many years is it?
Martha: This coming one is our 16th year of the Sugarloaf Charity Summit. Overall, we’ve raised over $2 million so far for Maine Charities.
Lisa: That’s pretty amazing because you’ve … This started as a much smaller event many years ago, not even for a cancer-related charity, right?
Martha: That’s correct. Yeah. Originally, it started as a fund-raiser for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Maine. It was called the Sugarloaf Vertical Challenge. It has since evolved. Over 10 years now, we’ve been with beneficiaries being Maine Cancer Foundation and the Martha B. Webber Breast Care Center at Franklin Community Hospital in Farmington.
Bruce: Martha’s been involved longer than I have. I got into it about 7 years ago when my friend Peter Webber, Martha Webber’s husband, asked me to be involved and help out. That’s when I started.
Lisa: You knew Peter because you taught his kids how to ski. Is that right?
Bruce: They were some of my athletes that I coached in ski racing when they were little kids, yeah, his 3 children. I knew Peter from when I was young. He was always an icon in the ski business anyway. I knew him in high school and college. I knew of him. I did a lot of work for him when I had a business with Sugarloaf Housing. I had a plumbing business, and he was my main customer, great, great guy, great family.
Lisa: When Martha passed away to breast cancer, Peter started the Martha B. Webber Breast Care Center at the hospital, which enables all the women in Franklin County and beyond to get their mammograms right there and be … get diagnosed right there instead of having to drive to Portland as they did in the day.
Martha: Martha was pretty young when she passed away.
Lisa: Yes, she was. I believe she was 52.
Martha: This is something that the Maine Cancer Foundation is actually trying to address is the research behind cancer, so that it’s not just how do we have a mammogram for a woman and find the cancer and treat it, it’s how do we get to the place where we’re finding cancer before it happens.
Lisa: Exactly. This is something that you probably have an interest in I would think Bruce because of what your wife has gone through.
Bruce: Yes, my wife, Cathy, was diagnosed at the Martha B. Webber Breast Care Center through a routine mammogram about 8 years ago. Everybody’s had issues with cancer. That was the start of a long journey, one that’s continuing. She’s fine now, but once you get cancer, you can’t … It’s always in the back of your mind as time goes on. Thanks to the good healthcare we got in Maine, things went well.
Lisa: The Martha B. Webber Center is also a place where people can get treatment and support for their cancer as well, which is a lot more convenient than having to travel longer distances.
Martha: Absolutely.
Bruce: Yes. We ended up going to Portland, but, basically, because all of our family is from down this area anyway. It was very easy for us to use the Portland facilities. If it hadn’t been for the diagnostic facilities at Martha B. Webber, we might not have found out as early as we could.
Lisa: We’re lucky to have you in here recording the show today because it’s not quite snow season. I think they’re just starting to send snow out on the mountain at this point. I don’t think Sugarloaf is … As we’re recording this, Sugarloaf is not open.
Martha: It’s going to be open pretty soon.
Bruce: November 20th. Our sister resort, Sunday River, opened last weekend. Dana Bullen, the manager there, was very happy about that.
Lisa: I bet.
Bruce: Yes.
Lisa: You’re both still skiing strong.
Bruce: Oh, yeah.
Martha: Yeah.
Lisa: Each of you has your own special relationship with Sugarloaf. What’s yours?
Martha: I started as a ski patroller. I was the second female ever hired at Sugarloaf on the ski patrol. It was back in the late ’70s. I moved up there at that point, and it’s always been part of my life and my heart since then.
Lisa: How about you?
Bruce: My dad decided to go to Sugarloaf to try it out in 1961, when I was 12. Luckily for me, he fell in love with the place, because I did anyway. Then we built and A-frame in Carrabassett Valley back when you could lease a lot for $75 a year and build a little 16 by 20 A-frame. Then, when I graduated from high school, I knew that’s where I wanted to live. I took a year off between high school and college and went out to teach skiing and coach ski racing and then went to college in Farmington and moved to Sugarloaf full time.
Lisa: What do you think it is about Sugarloaf that has kept both of you coming back all these years?
Martha: It’s got to be the heart of the mountain. It’s really a true skier’s mountain. It has a wonderful … A Sugarloaf family, once you’re a Sugarloafer, you’re always a Sugarloafer. People are there to support and to give all the time. In some ways, it’s a very small community and yet you still have your independence and your privacy.
Lisa: How about you, Bruce?
Bruce: Yeah, Sugarloaf has a very high percentage of season pass holders. Those are the people who are going to go up every single weekend. They’re ready to leave Portland or the North Shore in Boston on Friday night and go up there and make the trek. It’s a little bit further away, not that much, but it’s just, once you get there, you’re going to see people you know. It’s like a second family.
We just had what we call our Annual Sugarloafers Homecoming, over Columbus Day weekend. It’s just a huge event. Thousands of people come up. They have their condo association meetings or camp meetings, and everybody reconnects with people that they may not have seen since last April or May.
Lisa: One thing that I’m impressed by is the number of people that have supported the Sugarloaf Charity Summit and have supported it for years in various ways. You have lots of different events that people can be involved in.
Martha: Yes, we do. We do. We’re very fortunate to have a core group of supporters, both supporters and fundraising that do the fundraising, the Loafers for a Cure, I’m sure we’ll get into that, the sponsors that have supported us for year after year, and the team of volunteers that help us. Of course, the mountain is very supportive. We’re very fortunate of that.
Lisa: Tell me about the events that encompass the Sugarloaf Charity Summit, because it’s not just 1 event, there is 1 big party that a lot of people think of when they think of the Charity Summit. Really, it starts with the Snowshoe Shuffle, and it lasts quite a while.
Martha: Yeah, the Snowshoe Shuffle is coming up December 30th. it’s a Wednesday, during Christmas week, a perfect time. Perhaps, it’s a little windy on the mountain. Sometimes, it is. It’s wonderful to go down to the outdoor center and do the Snowshoe Shuffle. It’s a fundraiser. The registration is $25, although we have packages for groups and packages for families. If a parent comes and wants to bring a child, the child is free. Likewise, if we get 3 people from a team or a group, the fourth person is free. It’s a Snowshoe Shuffle. That’s the registration fee. You’re welcome to also do electronic fundraising with that for different incentives along the way. It’s fun. We have 2 courses. It’s a beautiful stroll through the woods at the base of Sugarloaf, looking up at a beautiful mountainous territory.
Bruce: Snowshoes are not mandatory. The trail is packed very well. You can walk. A lot of people bring their ski poles and do what we call Nordic walking. It’s a beautiful place. The outdoors is set up for a winter walk through the woods. It’s just gorgeous. The scenery is just spectacular there.
Martha: That’s our kickoff event at the summit.
Lisa: Do I understand that people wear costumes as well?
Martha: Absolutely. Thanks for mentioning that. They do. We have all different kinds of costumes. We usually have a couple of the characters come and participate. We have Amos the Moose. Last year, we had Blueberry the Black Bear come down and participate, too.
Lisa: That starts on December 30th.
Martha: That’s a Monday, 10:00 in the morning till noon-ish.
Lisa: You don’t have to be a snowshoe expert. You don’t even have to be snowshoeing.
Martha: Correct. You just have to be willing to show up and have some fun and do some fundraising.
Lisa: Exactly. What happens next?
Martha: Then the big events are on January the 30th. A lot of prep work goes into those. One of the things that’s done between now and the 30th of January is Loafers for a Cure. That’s our fundraising arm. Bruce is really the pro on that, so I’m going to pass the baton over to Bruce.
Bruce: To be a Loafer for a Cure, all you have to have is the desire to be involved and hit up your friends and family to raise money to help you raise money for all the Sugarloaf Charity Summit. We have this what they call Peer to Peer Fundraising website that’s linked through the Charity Summit website, which is Sugarloafcharitysummit.org. You just go on there. We have rewards for you that you can earn when you raise money to certain levels. It’s a great, great way to help out with the event.
Last year, the Sugarloaf Loafers for a Cure raised, collectively, over $41,000 for the event. That’s like 25% of the amount raised, almost.
Lisa: There’s no lower age limit for doing this fundraising?
Martha: No. Actually, last year, we had an 8-year-old that went door to door in his neighborhood with his parent … with his dad. He collected money. The lesson that his father shared with him, the life lesson was, when the little boy said, “You know, dad, I feel kind of strange asking people for money,” his dad said, “Yeah, but we only feel strange for a minute. The people we are helping feel strange for a really long time.” Really, it was a wonderful life lesson. His father is also one of our Loafers. It was an energetic boy who wanted to go out on a Sunday, and his dad said, “Well, you know, maybe, maybe we should wait till next weekend. It’s already dark out,” and so on, and the little boy said, “Oh, no, dad, it’s Sunday. People are going to be home. They might not be home next weekend, so this is a good time,” so off they went and success was had.
Lisa: Excellent. I know you have some other events that also take place?
Martha: We do. One of the incentives actually for Loafers for a Cure, or you can participate on your own, is called Cut for a Cure, which is the only day of the year where the mountain allows us to cut the lift line, and we actually use the Perfect Turn line. It’s for 20 bucks. From 10:00 until 2:00, you get to use that line. It’s a load of fun. You’re entered into a drawing for a Sugarloaf downhill supply company, the Ski Shops gift card. That’s a wonderful incentive as well. That’s one of the events.
Bruce: With that, the people who do get to cut the line for paying money, so that people know why they’re able to do that. We give them some pink beads to wear so they know that they’re helping out with the fundraiser for the charity summit.
Martha: We have a waxing tent with Jerry Murphy from Swix. He does free waxes for donations right there at the base of the SuperQuad. This year, I think we’re also going to do it at Skyline, too. That’s another just little fun perk of the day. We have the raffle going on, which we can talk about, and the silent auction, and then the charity ball. There’s quite a bit involved.
Lisa: All right, what about the raffle? What types of things?
Bruce: The raffle is great. You get a chance to win a 2-year season pass for Sugarloaf with no blackouts. It’s a season pass for the downhill ski center, plus the touring center, the outdoor center so you can use it for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing as well as downhill skiing. It’s a 2-year pass, so great value.
Martha: For the next 2 years.
Bruce: For the next 2 years. That’s been generously donated by Sugarloaf for many, many years now. The tickets are $10 for 1 or 3 for $25. They’ll be on sale on the website also, or you can buy them from the Sugarloafers that you’ll see on the weekend. There will be people out selling them lift lines wearing bullwinkles.
Martha: It seems like every year, the winter event has touched by cancer in some way or another. It’s kind of eerie. I guess we all are touched by cancer. That’s a large group of people. However, I remember last year when I called the winner, he was in the lift line, and you could hear him yelling and yahooing all the way over in the base lodge from lift line, and then he in turn is in fact a radiologist, so he’s very much in tune with the cancer community.
Bruce: You asked earlier about Sugarloaf itself. The family of Sugarloaf, I’m the president of the Sugarloaf Ski Club. Sugarloaf Ski Club formed the mountain in 1950. They started the whole thing off. We represent around 1,300 core Sugarloafers. The Sugarloaf Ski Club is very supportive of the event. A lot of the members participate. a lot of the members go to the event.
Lisa: We have in the past Sugarloafers that were there from the very beginning. It seems like it’s the type of thing that, if your father was a Sugarloafer, you become a Sugarloafer, your grandchild becomes a Sugarloafer. Has that been your experience in your families?
Bruce: Yes. My dad was the first generation in my family. My wife and I don’t have children, so we’re the end of our generation. We’re on the 4th generation Sugarloafers now right now. There are people who are skiing at Sugarloaf. I know John Chapman who skis Sugarloaf every day since 1949 when they were climbing the Appalachian trail with his dad, who was the first president of the Sugarloaf Ski Club. John has grandchildren that ski up there. They’re 4th generation Sugarloafers.
Lisa: As a ski instructor, you’ve likely had the opportunity to educate many of these family members in skiing.
Bruce: Yes. I got to meet a lot of them and work with them.
Lisa: What about the silent auction that you were describing?
Martha: Sure. The silent auction is just wonderful. It’s over 200 items. It starts at noon. We close out some of the tables around 3:00 and we close out the bidding at 4:00. The last bidding though is during the charity ball for some of the items. The items that we have are what I like to refer to as gifts from the heart. People give in what ways they can. It might be a custom artwork, hand-carved skier design. It might be a piece of nostalgia that’s, like a back-lit sign of Sugarloaf that we had last year, a collector’s item. It might be a gift certificate to a restaurant or gift baskets or hand-crafted items, photography, all kinds of things that we have donated.
As I said, it’s starts at noon on Saturday, the 30th, in the base lodge. We’ll have some tables that close out at 3:00, and the rest will be part of the charity ball close-out.
Lisa: Now, tell me about the charity ball, because I think this is your crowning event, the crown jewel of the Sugarloaf Charity Summit. It’s something that you both put a lot of work into.
Martha: Yes. It certainly is a team effort. There’s no question about it. We have the charity ball. It’s not a dancing ball per se. It’s Sugarloaf’s night to remember of the season. There are over 400 guests that attend. We have a live auction. We close out the silent auction. We have a great reception time. We have a wonderful buffet. We have a cancer ceremony, a survivor ceremony, usually a few words about a cancer story of some sort and our very lively live auction. We try and keep it to a dozen items. Each of those items are at least a $1,000 value. Things that we’ve had in the past are a round-trip airplane, a flight, a round-trip flight to anywhere in New England, and you could go to Martha’s Vineyard for the summer and be picked up at the end of the summer, or you could go to New York City for a business trip and back. We’ve had very unique items. That’s just one of which we’ve had many.
Bruce?
Bruce: We’ve been very fortunate to have the Keenan family involved in the auction, Steph and Steven Keenan, twins. They’re both auctioneers. They’re both cancer survivors also. They have some very funny stories to tell about their own cancer experience to get the crowd rolling.
Martha: Yes, they do. They’re very professional, obviously. We had a trip to Napa Valley last year, thanks to Merriam Vineyards. I just spoke to the people that won that at the auction last year, and they had a ball. They had a custom deluxe tour of the vineyards and tasting and just had a wonderful, wonderful trip. You never know what we’re going to have. We do try and promote those in advance to give people a heads up so that they can be prepared to bid and bid high on them.
Bruce: One of the auction items in the live auction last year was a VIP package donated by Jay Darling for a Kenny Chesney concert at Bangor at the Darling Pavilion.
Lisa: Are there any other particularly exciting things especially for skiers?
Bruce: Yeah. We’re really excited for skiers. It’s a really popular thing. The mountain started doing this for some corporate VIPs a long time ago, and it became popular now so that they gave us a package where you and 19 of your friends can get on a snowcat and go out skiing 2 hours before the lifts open, and so you have the whole mountain to yourself, and then you get to have a really nice breakfast at Bullwinkle’s, which is the on-the-mountain restaurant. It’s halfway up the mountain. You get all of this before anybody else is on the mountain. That’s a really popular, popular item that is in the auction.
Lisa: That sounds like fun. I think I’d want to be one of those 19 people or the winner. That would actually be pretty great. It doesn’t sound like, from what you’re saying, it doesn’t sound like you actually need to be the person who wins. You could transfer this over to someone else?
Martha: Absolutely. If you were a non-skier and you wanted to support the Sugarloaf Charity Summit, you could buy a raffle ticket or buy 3 for $25 online and, if you’re the winner, you can give that to someone that does ski. You could actually give it to 2 different people, 1 for 1 year and 1 for the second year. There’s lots of flexibility with that, but it is Sugarloaf only, no blackout dates, Alpine and Nordic combined for the 16, 17 season and the 17, 18 season.
Lisa: Now, if you can’t make it to the Sugarloaf Charity Summit, but you somehow want to be involved, what would you recommend?
Bruce: You can come to the Snowshoe Shuffle that’s on the 30th, if you got a chance to get up to the outdoor center and participate in that, or you can become a Loafer for a Cure. You don’t really have to be at Sugarloaf to do that. You could just become a Loafer for a Cure and raise money that is going to help the Maine Cancer Foundation and the Martha B. Webber Breast Care Center. We’re glad to take donations of any kind. You can make a donation by just going to the website also. Just make a general donation to the cause. It goes to a good cause.
Martha: Or you can donate to the auctions. There’s always that opportunity as well.
Bruce: Yeah, if you own a restaurant in town or a hotel or any business and you’d like to give us a gift certificate that we could put in the silent auction, that’d be awesome.
Martha: Maybe it’s a gift certificate to Martha’s Restaurant and it’s in honor of Cathy in her fight against cancer. We can put that right on the auction bid sheet so that it’s … It’s a way of supporting that person who’s fighting cancer.
Lisa: Over the years, how many people do you think have volunteered for this?
Martha: I’d still say right around 125. We’ve had a tremendous core group of volunteers that have been with us since day 1. It hasn’t been that much larger of a group, just a very dedicated group.
Lisa: How many people tend to be doing Loafers for a Cure?
Bruce: Last year, there was about 17 or 18, but, collectively, they raised over $41,000.
Lisa: That’s impressive. Between the people that you have on Loafers for a Cure, the volunteers, all the people that participate in the Snowshoe Shuffle and the raffles and the Cut for a Cure, there must be hundreds and hundreds of people over the years when they’ve done this.
Martha: I think more like thousands, because when, the multiple effect, when you’ve got a fundraiser that’s raising over $10,000 and some of those donors are only 25, each one of those donations adds right up. It’s well into the thousands of people.
Bruce: Yeah. I get to process all the donations coming in from the Loafers. Believe me, we have a lot of $10, $20 and then some $100 or more donations that come in. If 2 people like Tim Tan, Sheryl and Kelly, they probably have well over a hundred donors that donate to their Loafer for a Cure.
Lisa: I’m excited to experience some of this myself. I think that there are people who are listening who will be excited to experience this. Martha, how can people find out about what you’re doing with the Sugarloaf Charity Summit?
Martha: The best way is our website, which is Sugarloafcharitysummit.org. From there, it has both Bruce’s phone number and my phone number. We’d be happy to guide you either on the fundraising efforts or how to do an auction item or where to buy a raffle ticket or charity ball tickets or what have you or sponsor.
Lisa: Bruce, do you have any final thoughts for us?
Bruce: Just that it’s a really heartwarming event when you go to where everybody is … you walk away with a really good feeling. If you can make the ball, that is really a great thing to be at.
Lisa: We thank the Portland community that has been so supportive of the event over the years as well as the mountain community. I encourage people to find out more about the Sugarloaf Charity Summit online or also through the Sugarloaf issue of Maine Magazine, which is the December issue. We’ve been speaking with Martha Bradley and Bruce Miles, who are Sugarloafers behind the Sugarloaf Charity Summit.
Thanks so much for coming in today.
Martha: Thanks, Lisa. We look forward to having you up there this year.
Bruce: Thank you