As a kid, one of my favorite test questions was to draw lines connecting items on the left with their appropriate pairing from a list on the right. So, take out your pencils and, employing a ruler so your line is laser-straight, s’il vous plaît, match the following leading causes of death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with their local fundraising events.
Here are the correct pairings, numbered according to their place in each list: 1-6, 2-3, 3-2, 4-4, 5-7, 6-5, 7-1.
It would be conceptually difficult to pitch a charity for “unintentional injuries,” which is chiefly motor vehicle accidents, but includes homicides, falls and bee stings. On the other hand, there’s no intuitive excuse for the lack of a stroke charity - the other cause of death that hasn’t a local fundraiser.
The leading cause of death has a million-dollar fundraiser - the Heart Ball, which this year raised more than $800,000 but has in the past exceeded $1 million - and the second’s event did raise a million - the Gala for Life put on by the Winthrop Rockefeller Cancer Institute. The sixth, Alzheimer’s disease, has no long-established fundraising event on the social calendar.
This Tuesday, Alzheimer’s Arkansas holds its second annual Advocate of the Year at Temple B’Nai Israel at 6 p.m. This one will honor Bob Shell. Tickets are $100 and can be arranged with Linda Young, (501) 224-0021, linda.young@alzark.org.
Last year, the organization bestowed its inaugural Advocate honor on its first executive director, Phyllis Watkins. Watkins was the executive director of the local chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association before she and her board seceded from the national group more than a decade ago to establish Alzheimer’s Arkansas when the association merged the Arkansas chapter into the Oklahoma one. The two sides went to binding arbitration over donor funds. It was, as they say of divorce proceedings, not amicable.
The missions of the organizations split, too. The association is chiefly concerned with research dollars.Alzheimer’s Arkansas has focused on support groups for caregivers and financial disbursements for respite care, home improvements such as wheelchair ramps, and aid for legal and financial advice. (The groups are listed on its website, AlzArk.org/supportgroups.)
I just assumed that the missing Alzheimer’s gala fundraiser on the social calendar could be explained by the split - the two organizations were, separately, too small to get one together, but Watkins says that’s not it at all. For one, Alzheimer’s Arkansas did have a dinner-auction for several years, Art to Remember. The last one took place at Pavilion in the Park in ’11. For another, the national association has organized walks (Memory Walks, now Walks to End Alzheimer’s) for more than 20 years. Its Little Rock walk in November registered nearly 700 walkers and raised about $67,000, says Allison Hogue, association spokesman in Little Rock.
“Galas like the Heart Ball [and] Saints and Sinners have been around a long time, put on by large organizations, and those events are well-established,” Watkins says.
Then there’s this - Alzheimer’s has no survivors. The Komen race is a moving huzzah for its survivors, the Heart Ball and Gala for Life, too. Consider Easter Seals, whose Arkansan of the Year is a massive black-tie event - its publicity material is filled with the smiling faces of the disabled and impaired, who are learning skills, even working, to improve their lives.
Alzheimer’s is the “long goodbye.” Picture that.
A group like Alzheimer’s Arkansas, with a budget of about $600,000 according to its 2011-12 tax filing, makes an annual appeal to supporters, hosts regional walks of its own - in McRae, Russellville, Mountain Home, Conway and Little Rock - and accepts memorials, honorariums and foundation gifts, says current director Elise Siegler.
Hogue’s group is hosting a Southern Soiree on April 10 at Church Street Station in Jonesboro honoring state Rep. Butch Wilkins, who lost his wife, Pat, to Alzheimer’s in her early 60s. “People admire him, and we all followed his story with his wife over the past seven years.”
What tickets remain for the event - sponsored by Arkansas State University and Centennial Bank, as well as St. Bernard’s Village, Reliance Healthcare, Hope Healthcare and Three Rivers Health & Rehab - are $100 and can be bought by calling the office, (501) 265-0027.
Ironically, as of July 1, Little Rock regained sole sovereignty of the Arkansas chapter from Tulsa, and is looking for an executive director. Hogue says there are places where the two groups could, should partner.
On a gala fundraiser? That would be High Profile’s voice vote. Imagine the frisson! ’Twould be as gay divorcees un-souring for their teenager’s graduation party.
FROM INTERNECINE DISCORD TO ECUMENICAL HARMONY
On Wednesday, Just Communities of Arkansas, the small nonprofit with the big mission of bringing the influential and the disenfranchised together from within their communities, honors two folks and one institution at the Central Arkansas Library System Main Library in downtown Little Rock with its 18th Father Joseph H. Biltz Awards.
And the honorees are:
Deborah Robinson Bell, executive director of Better Community Developers Inc., for her group’s work on the 12th Street Corridor, revitalizing not only buildings and infrastructure but also the lives of residents. Better Community provides job and life skills training, HIV/AIDS outreach, substance abuse intervention and treatment, and environmental issues among other programs.
William Waddell Jr., a partner with the Friday, Eldredge and Clark law firm, for his efforts to provide equal access to the legal system for those who are poor or otherwise marginalized, through pro bono work and his association with the Arkansas Access to Justice Commission.
The Interfaith Center at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in west Little Rock. Founded by the Rev. Susan Sims Smith, the center offers an ecumenical prayer space and interactive programs meant to make connections among the world’s many faith traditions.
The event begins with a food-and-drinks reception at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $50. For more information, call Ruth Shepherd, (501) 372-5129, or email rshepherd@justcommunities.org .
High Profile, Pages 33 on 03/09/2014