"Hey, Wayne! How did the Woodbury Lion's Club Antique Auction go?" Many of you are aware that, I, being a Woodbury Lion, helped out in an ambitious fundraising project that took place at Quassy Amusement Park's huge open-walled outdoor pavilion on April 19th. During the two critical days of our sale, Saturday sale day and Friday inspection, we were belted with-for that period-the two coldest, snowiest, windiest, nastiest, most unspringlike days, in recorded history. Here's our story.
Our annual Saint Patrick's Day fund-raiser for Spring, 1996, netted about $500.00 for charity. I ran that event and vowed never to do so again. "We should be embarrassed with these kind of results!" I claimed. Next thing I knew, I was volunteered as chairman for the new and improved fund-raiser. Whoops! I should have kept my mouth shut.
We decided on a commission-based auction because of area's well-deserved reputation as a place to gather and sell antiques, and because we wanted to run a business. Providing a worthwhile service is good way to raise money for charity. Two weeks before Christmas, we had our business plan in place and divided our 80+ members into five work teams. Our planning team was headed by retired dentist Charlie Rehkamp, who ran St. Paul's Auction for years, and insurance/real estate agent, Ken Deschino-who would also recruit young Lion's called Leos to help us with the sale. Ed Manzi procured our insurance. The salesmen in our group, headed by real estate agent Richard Aronheim and advertising professional Tony Pratt would be responsible for procuring consignments and promoting the event. Moving & Storage would be covered by brawny builder Karl Lindahl and 35 strong-armed assistants. Jim Trompeter took on the leadership role for our accounting team, manned by CPA's like Larry Sherman and local businessmen including Bank of Boston branch manager Rick Kalnins. Our site team would be headed by custom builder Billy Barthelmess. With the help of architect Bob Keating, and Plumbing-HVAC contractor, Ed Grundzian, and Quassy manager Eric Anderson - who provided us our facility free of charge - and other such lions, Billy would see to it our auction environment was the best it could be. It was to be a tougher chore than he knew.
I remember how pleased I felt on Monday, five days before the sale. It was about 65 and sunny. Homeowners (the true heroes of this event) throughout the community had responded to our ads and great publicity we'd received like Lisa Hoffman's super article in this paper. We had secured 475 first class antique lots for our auction. The beautiful auction catalog was finished. The accounting systems were in place. Lion teamwork and hard efforts had brought us closer together as a group. We were going to pull this thing off! Then came the weather reports - COLD WEATHER, HIGH WINDS & SNOW!
We battled through it. Billy and the gang built walls to fight off the wind. Nancy Aborn and the Channel 3 TV crew showed up at 5:00 am the day before the sale. The place was packed with Lion's young and old. They didn't pose for pictures. They were fighting off Old Man Winter himself. On Saturday, 300 people braved the weather and spent nearly $175,000 at our sale. The sale went off without a hitch. Our net commissions for charity exceeded $20,000. The answer about how the auction went is, "It went well!" In the harshest of conditions, a group of men called Lion's, and kids called Leo's, learned a new business and pulled off one of the most successful and talked about sales in recent Connecticut history. Now, if only I could feel my toes.
Woodbury Lions Club Charity Auction
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