LITTLE ROCK — Terri Erwin has planned or helped plan many fundraising events in the last 25 years. Next weekend, there’s a big one planned around her.
On Saturday Erwin will be feted at the 2013 Woman of the Year, the chief fundraiser for Women and Children First, a shelter for abused women and their children.
Erwin, 57, has served in various capacities with many organizations and institutions, like the Arkansas Arts Center, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, Episcopal Collegiate School, the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and Hendrix College. She is a past chairman of Tabriz, the main fundraiser for the Arts Center, overseeing 300 volunteers and coordinating committees handling all manner of minutiae for that two-day party.
And she and her husband, Chuck, are past chairmen of The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s Opus Ball, too, where they took on the challenge of making everyone a star of the Robinson Music Center stage (a feat that required extending the raised stage out over several rows of seats).
While their children were attending The Cathedral School, she and Chuck joined forces with Jackson T. Stephens and Harriet and Warren Stephens and a few others to start the Episcopal Collegiate School, now a pre-kindergarten through high school institution. She was co-chairman of the initial capital campaign and was on the board of trustees for six years. She still serves on the school’s foundation board even though her children are now grown.
“Terri embodies the quintessential Woman of the Year honoree. She is a beautiful woman with a beautiful spirit. She has been an amazing advocate for our organization, both raising funds and raising awareness of how the shelter is a last stop in saving the lives of women and children who are in danger,” says Susan Reynolds, a Women and Children First board member and chairman of this year’s Woman of the Year gala.
Money raised from the event is expected to make up more than one third of Women and Children First’s annual operating budget.
‘UP TO ANOTHER LEVEL’
“Domestic violence has never been a part of my life, but it’s prevalent throughout the country and it’s a very real issue,” Erwin says. “It’s extremely heartbreaking. Some of these mothers arrive at the shelter and they have nothing with them. No driver’s license. No purse. They have just escaped with their children, and the shelter helps them by providing all kinds of counseling and a safe place to live, and then they even help them set up job interviews and try to help them get back on their feet. It’s hard to imagine when you haven’t been in that situation, not having any support and needing help. There’s a hot line and they get calls all hours of the night.”
She has the utmost respect for the staff at the shelter, which is in an undisclosed location for the protection of women and children who often arrive there in fear for their lives.
“You can hear the passion in their voices when they’re talking about their jobs,” Erwin says. “The passion and just the dedication - it’s so important to them to make the shelter a safe place and to help these victims and to make the shelter successful. And that’s why this gala is so successful, because all of the money that’s raised goes straight into the shelter, to improve the kitchen, the living quarters, to fund the shelter.”
Reynolds first met Erwin when they volunteered together at Arkansas Children’s Hospital and the Arkansas Arts Center.
“I have gotten to know her so well and she’s a beautiful woman and she has such a beautiful spirit. Because she has had such incredible experience at running other events, she has been really hands on in this event, which we really appreciate because it brings us up to another level,” Reynolds says. “Terri and Chuck have gone above and beyond to help with this event.”
The Woman of the Year gala will start with a cocktail reception at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Grand Ballroom of the Peabody Little Rock hotel. Tickets to the black-tie event are $250 each. There will be remarks about the shelter and a testimonial from someone who has lived in the shelter. There will be live entertainment from the Atlanta Showstoppers.
“The band is just over the top,” Reynolds says. “We’ve never had entertainment at this level before. It’s like a 10-piece band.”
NOT YOUR AVERAGE GROUPIE
Erwin is particularly excited about the musical part of the evening.
“We want everyone to stay when it’s over with and celebrate and dance and just enjoy each other, and this band is a dance band - I have heard them play and they interact a lot with the crowd.”
Music is a bit of an avocation for Erwin.
“A lot of people don’t know this about me, but ... I’m kind of a groupie,” she laughs. “When I was in high school I sat in the front row at the Three Dog Night concert out at Barton Coliseum - it was so exciting!”
Later, when she was a mom, there was no concert she refused to take her kids to. Those concerts made for some precious childhood memories for her daughter, Marisa Ann, a sales and sponsorship assistant with IMG Fashion in New York.
“My first concert was the Spice Girls in Dallas,” she says. “My mom took my brother and me and then my best friend, Jane Anne, and her mom also came with us. I think we bought every item of Spice Girls paraphernalia that they sold. After this concert, it became a tradition for my mom to take Jane Anne and me to every concert. I think most of my friends were jealous that my mom was willing to take us to all of these concerts. They definitely thought she was really great for doing that. Most recently, we saw Madonna together in New York and it was just as fun going to a concert with her as it was when I was 12 years old.”
“One of the highlights of my life, besides having children,” Erwin says, “was sitting on the front row of a Barbra Streisand concert in Anaheim, Calif., in 1994. And at the time she was dating Don Johnson- remember Don Johnson of Miami Vice? Well, he was sitting behind us. So I was trying to watch her and turn around and look at him - that was really exciting and I’m a really big Barbra Streisand fan.”
One of the clients of Chuck Erwin’s accounting firm, Erwin and Co., got them the tickets to that concert, she says.
CHUCK AND TERRI
The couple met while she was working as his father’s administrative assistant in a Little Rock accounting firm. She had graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in English from Hendrix College in Conway and had originally planned to train as a paralegal.
Chuck Erwin was working at his father’s firm as an accountant.
“Frank White and my father-in-law were very good friends and Frank White decided that he was going to run for governor in 1980 and he was running against Bill Clinton. No one thought that he could beat Bill Clinton, but he did. And he asked my father in-law if he would manage his finances for his campaign. My father-in-law, Harry Erwin, said, no, he couldn’t but he would ask his son and his administrative assistant to help him with his campaign. And that’s kind of how Chuck and I kind of really became such great friends and then started dating.”
The accounting firm where they worked merged with Arthur Young & Co., and that company offered Chuck a one-year tax residency program at their international office in New York.
He and Terri Erwin, who had been married for about six months, packed up and moved into a tiny New York apartment, and she went to work as an administrative assistant to four accountants, two of them from Sweden.
“They didn’t speak English very well and they had the hardest time understanding me with my Southern accent, and they would come by my desk and say things to me that were just kind of random and I finally figured out it was to hear me talk. I just thought they have gone back to their offices and closed the door and they are just back there laughing,” she says.
The year they spent in New York was filled with adventure. They both worked in the Chemical Building on Park Avenue, and each weekend they’d pick a spot in the city to explore. “We had an apartment that was about ‘this’ big, we had a fold-out couch and the kitchen, you could just stand and touch wall-to-wall. We had people come and visit us all the time. They slept on that little foldout sofa.”
Marisa Ann lives just a few blocks from where they lived all those years ago, in Murray Hill in midtown Manhattan. Last year, they spent the holidays there as a family, with their son, Clayton, joining them after finishing his exams in Connecticut. This year, Clayton is in Paris, teaching English to French students in a public high school.
“A real gift that Chuck’s parents gave us is that for about six years in a row they took the Erwin clan on a cruise. It was the most wonderful gift that they could give their children and grandchildren,” she says. “Alaska was our first cruise. My children were, I guess, in fourth and sixth grades, and I think … I attribute a lot of their sense of travel and adventure to my in-laws.”
The Erwins have enjoyed traveling as a nuclear family as well, spending three weeks in Africa three years ago and visiting five countries during their trip.
“To be out on the Maasai Mara with all of God’s creations - it’s truly the circle of life,” she says.
Growing up in Little Rock, Erwin, the oldest of three girls born to Virginia Ann and John Johnson, went on annual family vacations, including once to the Grand Canyon, once to Mexico and often to the beach.
Erwin went to Williams Elementary, Forest Heights Junior High and Hall High, and her parents were supportive of her many extracurricular activities.
“We did a lot of activities. Brownies, Girl Scouts, piano lessons. I was a Hall High Cherokee. I was on the drill team. So, we were at a lot of football and basketball games. My mother did a lot in our schools, and she was our Girl Scout leader, which was so special to me.”
Erwin met JoNell Caldwell in fifth grade. They were best friends and lived just a few doors apart. They were both Johnsons then, and because of alphabetical seating charts were often seated together.
Erwin was maid of honor in Caldwell’s wedding, and when Erwin was married, she returned the honor to Caldwell -Erwin even wore Caldwell’s wedding dress. They both have sons named Clayton, born a couple of years apart, having chosen those names independent of each other and each giving her blessing before the birth certificate was signed.
“I think it’s very telling that she was voted Most Courteous in high school. Terri was one of the absolutely most courteous people that I know,” says Caldwell of Little Rock. “Being courteous is ... made up of small sacrifices, and that is the heart of who she is.”
Erwin began volunteering in earnest after she left the work force to raise her children - specifically, after Clayton needed minor surgery at Arkansas Children’s Hospital when he was 2 weeks old.
“My parents instilled in me a sense of helping others ... when I was growing up. I have always enjoyed being involved in numerous projects and seeing them through to completion,” she says. “One aspect of my volunteer work that has always been very special to me is that I have met many wonderful and interesting people over the years. Some of my dearest and most treasured friendships have been a result of my volunteering for so many organizations.”
Many of those friends will be in the room when she is honored as Woman of the Year.
“Through her efforts, she is making a direct impact on the lives of these people,” says Reynolds, who counts herself among Erwin’s friends. “We are thrilled that she agreed to let us honor her for 2013, and she has gone beyond our wildest dreams in her infectious enthusiasm and incredible success with the event.”
SELF PORTRAIT
Terri Erwin
DATE, PLACE OF BIRTH May 23, 1955, Little Rock
MY PROUDEST MOMENT TO DATE When Chuck and I attended our two children’s college commencement ceremonies.
IF I RAN THE WORLD I would try to eliminate all kinds of violence, especially violence against women and children.
THE FIVE PEOPLE I WOULD INVITE TO MY FANTASY DINNER PARTY Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Mary Tyler Moore, Joan Lunden and Meryl Streep.
I LIKE TO EAT All of my mother’s and grandmother’s family recipes.
MY KIDS THINK I AM A little too organized at times.
SOMETHING I COULD NEVER BE WITHOUT IS My calendar.
MY PET PEEVE IS People who do not follow through with what they say they are going to do.
I AM MOST COMFORTABLE On my long family trips.
ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP Appreciative.
High Profile, Pages 31 on 01/06/2013