Ahead of Philadelphia Union's contest against Sporting Kansas City on Thursday night, we're proud to announce tonight's Subaru Love Promise Playmaker is Ted Fravel.
Ted is a lifelong resident of Perkasie, PA., and is married to his childhood sweetheart, Tanya, and they are the proud parents of three children. The Fravel family also includes three dogs, two of which are rescues.
A graduate of Pennridge High School and Bucks County Community College, Ted holds a real estate license from the Schlicher-Kratz Institute. He is currently a Technical Product Specialist for Parker Hannifin Corporation and recently became a certified medical gas generalist.
Ted’s motto for doing good is “Together, we can accomplish great things.” It’s a spirit he’s lived out since his teenage years starting with his church youth group’s Adopt a Grandparent program. During his time with his “adopted” grandmother, Mrs. Hinman, he spent hours of quality time with her talking about current events and many other topics. Ted participated in many church efforts, including the CROP Walk and working on a new church building project alongside his father.
Through these and many other events, helping others became second nature to Ted. During his son’s involvement in Little League Baseball he became a volunteer coach. He then became involved in managing as a player agent and initiated a rating system meant to level the playing field for all the Little League’s players, a system that is still used today.
As his kids grew older, he sought out new opportunities to help his community. This led to coordinating a Bikes for Kids program at his current employer, Parker Hannifin Corporation. With the help of the community and local companies such as A&T Subaru they purchased, built, and donated bikes for Toys for Tots to distribute to local children at the holidays. Over the five years of the program, over 1000 bikes (and helmets) were built and donated.
Ted recently joined the Perkasie Rotary Club. Since last year he and his fellow members have collected over 800lbs of food for a local food pantry, provided hand sanitizer and personal protective equipment to a local government-run retirement in a COVID-19 relief project, and donated blankets to Tender Hearts, an organization that distributes blankets to the elderly during the holidays. Ted and the Club also adopt local families during the holiday season and provided their children with gifts for Christmas. Ted’s employer also supported his fundraising efforts leading to a $1500 donation to Manna on Main Street, a local food pantry.
Most recently, Ted and the Perkasie Rotary Club raised money for the COVID-19 frontline workers through “Ruck for Bucks,” an event where one of the club members ran, walked, and crawled 69 miles for 24 hours to raise awareness and $5,000. The Club also planted two trees in honor of the front line and the recent graduates in the local park.
Next up? Ted is currently working on a Golf Outing to help raise money to renovate a local park that has seen better days. Other projects Ted is working on with the Perkasie Rotary Club include providing back to school backpacks, with supplies, to kids in need and a bike event to raise funds for a Rotary Shelterbox, which is a crate of emergency supplies provided to disaster-struck locations.
Ted volunteers because he cares. He cares about his family, friends, the people in his community, and throughout the world. He believes the world can be a better place and that if we all do our part we can make a difference and impact the lives of others. Simple acts of kindness don't cost us much in money or time and they go a long way in providing assistance in some way even if it only gives people faith in people again.
