Rocker Ronnie James Dio remembered with bowling fundraiser for cancer awareness and research

More than 15 years after the death of heavy metal icon Ronnie James Dio, his widow and friends are continuing the fight against cancer on his behalf.

On Thursday, Wendy Dio and her friends and supporters will hold the annual Bowl for Ronnie celebrity tournament at Pinz Bowling Center in Studio City.

In the past, the event has been attended by such notables as rockers Dave Grohl and Tom Morello as well as actor Jack Black and dozens of other musicians from the metal and hard rock scene. It’s one of the two events held annually that raise awareness and money for the Ronnie James Dio Stand Up and Shout Cancer Fund.

According to Wendy Dio, the organization has raised about $2.5 million over the years, with funds going to the cancer research work of the T.J. Martell Foundation for Cancer, AIDS and Leukemia Research; the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and the UCLA School of Dentistry’s early cancer detection program, where Dr. David Wong is working on a way to detect stomach cancer from saliva samples.

Corporate lane sponsorships for the bowling event range from $2,500 to $3,000 for a team of bowlers (depending on when it’s booked), with a limited number of spectator tickets available for fans for about $90, including fees.

After spending more than 40 years in the music industry as an artist manager, Wendy Dio -- who had a bit part in the 1975 cult film “Death Race 2000” -- started the fund not long after her husband of more than three decades died of stomach cancer on May 16, 2010, at the age of 67.

Wendy Dio, the wife of late heavy metal singer Ronnie James Dio

(Marcus Ubungen / Los Angeles Times)

“When Ronnie passed away, a lot of people wanted to give money for cancer [research and awareness],” she says, seated at the bar in the castle-like Encino home she once shared with her late husband. “I’m very against big corporations taking a bunch of money, because where does it go? Iron Maiden gave us $10,000, so I thought why don’t we form our own cancer fund? We know if everybody gives a penny, it’s going to go straight to where we want it to go to, which is research and education.”

After the fund was formed, Wendy Dio found supporters from various facets of Ronnie James Dio’s storied career. Aside from fronting his namesake band Dio from 1982 through 2010, the diminutive singer was known for his piercing vocals and being among the first rockers to flash the famed devil horns hand gesture. He also had stints fronting Elf, Rainbow with Ritchie Blackmore, Black Sabbath during Ozzy Osbourne’s solo years, and Heaven & Hell, which reunited Dio with Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler.

It was shortly after what would turn out to be Dio’s final tour with Heaven & Hell in 2009 that the singer was diagnosed with stomach cancer. In the 2022 documentary “Dreamers Never Die,” Dio’s bandmate Butler noted that Ronnie was suffering on the tour.

“We didn’t know it was the last tour at the time,” he said. “Before he was going onstage, he’d be like doubled up some nights with terrible pain in his stomach.”

Butler said in the film that he and his bandmates would encourage Dio to visit a doctor; although he was still able to perform as if nothing were wrong, he was also in pain following the shows.

Even before that tour, Wendy Dio says Ronnie was having trouble with indigestion and visited a specialist in Beverly Hills. “They tested him for his heart, made him run around and did all these tests,” she recalls. However, that doctor failed to detect cancer, so Dio carried on with his career as usual.

After the last Heaven & Hell tour was completed, Wendy says Dio had other plans. “Ronnie didn’t want to take a break,” she says, adding that he had planned to take his band Dio back out on the road in Europe and even sent the group’s equipment overseas in advance of the tour.

However, the pain became too much to bear. Dio visited another doctor, who suggested a blood test that ultimately revealed his cancer diagnosis. Wendy went into overdrive, researching the best hospitals for stomach cancer treatment. Initially, they couldn’t get him into the MD Anderson Cancer Research Center, so they turned to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

“This doctor there said, ‘There’s nothing we can do for you. You should just go home and get your stuff in order,’” Wendy recalls. “It was horrible. We went back to the hotel and cried our eyes out and then I got a text saying we had an appointment at MD Anderson.” Tony Martell of the T.J. Martell Foundation put in a call to help get Dio an appointment at the hospital, Wendy says.

There they found a doctor with a more optimistic outlook, who vowed he would do everything possible to help Dio beat cancer.

After treatment, Ronnie’s condition improved. He came home to L.A., where he was honored with an award for Best Metal Singer at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards, but weeks later his condition worsened. He was taken to Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, where he was given morphine for the pain; he lapsed into a coma and died a few weeks later.

In the weeks and months immediately following Dio’s death, Wendy carried on. But five months later, Davy Kirkwood, an audio engineer and one of the pallbearers at Dio’s funeral, also died.

“I completely broke down,” Wendy recalls. “I think everything just built up and it all came over me. It was really then when I thought, ‘We have to do something’ and that’s when we decided to form the cancer fund.”

Among the celebrities who have turned out to support previous Stand Up and Shout fundraisers is Lita Ford. For the singer/guitarist, it’s personal. She was a fan and friend of Ronnie’s

“I miss Ronnie,” she says in a phone interview from her home near Phoenix. “There was nobody like him in the music industry. I listen to his songs almost every day, before the show, before we go onstage. Sometimes we’ll put on one of my favorite songs, [Rainbow’s] ‘Stargazer.’ If you can’t sing Ronnie, you’re not warmed up.”

Ford also lost her parents to cancer. Her mother died of breast cancer and her father succumbed to brain cancer. “One minute he was fishing and the next moment he was gone,” she says of her father’s decline, recalling how quickly the disease spread. “With my mother, I remember her asking me, ‘Why do I have cancer?’ And I couldn’t answer her. I didn’t know.”

Although Ford has attended the bowling event in the past, she’ll have to miss this year’s tournament due to a tour date in Cincinnati. She recalls fondly attending previous Stand Up and Shout events, including the annual Rock for Ronnie concert at Warner Park in Woodland Hills last May, at which she performed and auctioned off a custom-made guitar for the charity. In 2025, the annual Rock for Ronnie concert will be held at a new home on the grounds of the Autry Museum in Griffith Park.

That event, along with this year’s bowling party and all the other Stand Up and Shout fundraisers, features TV/radio personality Eddie Trunk as the host. The voice of Sirius/XM’s “Trunk Nation” developed a friendship with Dio over the years and dozens of interviews. “When he passed, it was devastating to me like so many others,” he says. When Wendy Dio told him she was putting together a fund to help those battling cancer, Trunk vowed he’d do anything he could to help.

Like Ford, Trunk’s family has also battled cancer, but his story has a happy ending. Due to screening and early detection, Trunk’s father was treated for early-stage colon cancer and survived. “As a result of that and that I have a direct family history, I get screened every three years with colonoscopies and that is something I talk about on the radio — the importance of screenings,” he says.

He’s also thankful to Wendy Dio for holding these events in Ronnie’s honor. “It’s great what she’s doing with the charity and it’s great that it celebrates Ronnie,” Trunk says. “The other thing that’s really nice about these events is that there’s a family of Dio friends and fans and it brings everyone together. We all have Ronnie stories, and it sounds really hokey, but it really truly does bring him back during those times, because we all really celebrate him and reconnect with him at these events.”

Lest anyone think the bowling event is just a party, Trunk — who also bowls in the tournament — says some of the participants take the competition very seriously.

One of his teammates is guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, who happened to be a guest on Trunk’s radio show the day we spoke to him.

“Tom’s a good friend and he anchors my team every year,” Trunk says. “He’s like, ‘This year, we got to bring in some pros. We got to get some ringers. We got to win this year.’ So, he gets all worked up about it,” Trunk adds. “Me, I’m just happy if I break 100.”