President’s Message
***Late Breaking News on Women’s Equality Day***
To sum it up in one phrase, our Women’s Equality Day and 50th Anniversary Event was a “Smashing Success.”
Our celebratory luncheon was a high energy and joyful occasion. Our honorees were inspiring, our speaker Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis was impressed by the size of our event and spoke with passion and appreciation for the work done and support given by NWPC in California. Her message focused on the many challenges facing us in California.
NWPC California President Angelica Ramos-Allen’s message included confirmation that we are still the largest caucus in the state.
We had about a dozen elected officials who attended including one of our favorite Good Guys Congressman Jim Costa. I’m sorry not to list all of the elected officials, but I’m afraid I’ll leave someone out. We invited former honorees, former Good Guys and former Fresno caucus presidents.
We were honored that our caucus’ first president Donna Newman was in attendance. She told the story of how she brought like-minded women together to create our caucus. After fifty years she was as dedicated and committed to our cause as ever. It was truly wonderful to have her in attendance.
We sold over 170 tickets in advance. I don’t have final numbers on our total attendance since we had a number of walk-ins. We raised nearly $1,000 on the sale of tickets for the alcohol tables. Our Silent Auction was a big hit, with more than thirty-five items for sale. Many thanks for all of those who donated items to the auction. We were blessed with many art and craft items which were very popular. Several attendees told me this was the highest quality silent auction they had ever seen. Good work my friends.
A special thank you to Annette Levi who has put together the slide presentation for many years. She really out did herself this year. She told me this is the last year she will be able to create the slide show but she assured me she had found two of our members who will take her place next year. Thank you Annette, we will miss you.
A special thank you to Keith Cappellutti who graciously used his graphic design expertise to make our program, flyer and other handouts look spectacular. Thus, he made us look good. Thanks Keith!
Thank you to all our sponsors who donated a total of $20,000 to the event!
The Women’s Equality Day Committee worked hard and it showed throughout the event. Teamwork was the key to such a well-organized event. Marsha Conant was the committee chair and her vision carried us forward to make the event such a success. Courtney Becker Foster was our very talented florist and decorator; Myra Coble, Patty Cappellutti and Courtney Becker-Foster manned the check-in table; Linda Knight organized and coordinated the Silent Auction; Cynthia Sterling and Barbara Castle worked with legislators to provide certificates from each of their offices to each of the honorees; Gina Vue shared her wealth of decorations to make the venue a floral and balloon wonderland; Cathy Brass organized the tables with NWPC brochures, membership applications, candy and NWPC pens; Marsha and Claudia Soria Delgado presented the awards to the honorees, Joanne Bazarian purchased the bottles for our alcohol tables and ordered the pens we placed at each place setting. Kimberly Tapscott-Munson and David Tepperman did a great job of selling tickets for the alcohol tables. Special thanks to all of you who stayed to help us clean-up after the event was over. If I missed anyone, I’m sorry and thank you for your help and support.
We will have a more accurate count of our attendees and our fundraising success at our next meeting!
Hope to see all of you on October 7th.
Grateful to be your president,
Lynn Badertscher
