Thirty Years Ago Today: The Very First Videogame Charity Marathon

Thirty years ago today, six young people stepped into the Gold Mine arcade in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, set a bucket next to an Asteroids machine, and took turns playing for the next five straight days, raising money for a family in need. This very well may be the first recorded videogame charity marathon in history.

The participants -- The Hill high school students Dan Arch, Jan Trunzo, and Rob Kovach, along with friends Andy Galamba and Bruce Walters -- played in four hour shifts, and accepted donations for the family of 18-year-old Leo Wampole, who died Christmas day of pneumonia complicated by cerebral palsy. Remarkably, none of them had ever even met Wampole.

"I didn't know him at all, but it's a very good cause,"Arch told a United Press reporter at the time.

Leo Wampole spent most of his 18 years confined inside of his low-income housing project due to the severity of his illness. When he passed away, a local funeral director gave Wampole a free burial, but his mother Carol was unable to pay for a grave marker.

At the end of the marathon, which lasted 132 hours, hundreds of dollars were raised for the Wampole family. The marathon might have gone on longer, but the three high school students had to return to school on Wednesday; their Winter vacations were over.

"My eyes started to smart after a while, but the hardest part was standing around for 3 1/2 hours,"Walters told a reporter.

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