When the economy gets tough, the turtles get going and going and going. In multiple heats, in fact, they ambled, shuffled or sprinted from a center ring to the outskirts of their circular race track and victory at the 78th Annual Johns Hopkins Turtle Derby, Friday, May 15. A little numbered flag attached to each via a small mound of sculptor’s clay could be cross-referenced in the derby’s program of 163 entries with names like “Children Out of the Playroom,” entered by the Department of Child Life, and “First When Seconds Count,” by the Department of Emergency Medicine.
John Zampella, John Nichols, Craig Monsen and Tom Feng were co-chairs of the derby, a rite of passage of sorts for first-year medical students during final exams, in a sunny courtyard of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in East Baltimore. While their larger racing counterparts would take off only miles away the following day in the Maryland Preakness, these turtles drew a crowd of students, doctors, nurses and their families, as well as pediatric patients from Hopkins Children's and children from the nearby Perkins Day Care Center, all in little caps of white against the midday sun. Medical students Phillip Storey and Nance Yuan donned the jockey silks of those who traditionally urge on larger mounts.
Johns Hopkins radiology students keep the races going, bringing the turtles onto the track, where they were released from within a tin ring emblazoned with “Turtle Derby,” and returning them to an out-of-sight staging area for re-numbering and a pep talk. Between heats, medical and radiology students entertained the crowd with juggling, renditions of the Dr. Seuss’s “Yertle the Turtle” and some turns around the course by a frolicking “Dora the Explorer” and “Wiggles.”
At one point, Master of Ceremonies Thomas Hanf, a med student in shorts and a black dinner jacket and tie, advised the audience ringing the track five deep in places that one turtle, “A-Rod,” had been disqualified for steroid use. Groans and the laughter of his peers greeted the mock, if educational, lecture. “Let that be a lesson kids,” he admonished his captive audience. “Say no to steroids!”
As Hanf and co-MC Eric Scholden and their colleagues became more animated, the races took on a more frenzied pace. Students kept tabs on the winners of each race on a chalk board. Hopkins Children's patients, some in wheel chairs, one with a camera, leaned in for a closer view.
Toward the end of the midday race, the crowd had thinned a bit, as employees returned to their offices or rounds and students perhaps to studying, as the derby is a short interlude between final exams. In the final race, winners of each of the seven heats vied, in "The Run for the Greenbacks," for the derby crown (and a small cash prize), which, in the end, went to “Santana Moss out of Moss Blue Chip by Art Major” entered by the Office of Student Affairs. The name “Santana Moss” has been added to the annals of Hopkins’ legendary turtlechase, first run in 1931 by the pet turtles of Johns Hopkins doorman Benjamin Frisby.
With the 2009 race over, a few hot dogs and sodas were still for sale by the Pre-Clinical Teaching Building, as the turtles were gathered up and prepared for the ride back to their North Carolina turtle farm. And soon all that stood in the courtyard were the spectator tents and the usual ebb and flow of Johns Hopkins medical employees going about their business and getting back to it.
Proceeds raised from the sale of "chances" and derby T-shirts and buttons are donated to Child Life at Hopkins Children's and its affiliated Perkins Day Care Center.