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October 4, 2004
Raise a Racquet against Breast Cancer

Dear family and friends, This past weekend we had the fourth annual "Raise a Racquet against Breast Cancer" fundraising event. Friday night we had the VIP "Meet the Stars" party at the Courtyard Marriot for all of our sponsors and volunteers. About eighty people gathered to meet our world renowned visiting pros: Guillermo Vilas, Virginia Wade and John Lloyd. Besides graciously putting up our stars, the Courtyard put out a beautiful spread of heavy hors d'oeuvres, with help from our sponsors at Cabot Cheese and Harris Wholesale (Budweiser).

Saturday morning we set up our courtside banners and decorations at the Carolina Country Club under overcast skies, perfect tennis weather. The children's clinics started the morning activities around 9:30. The adult clinics followed for about fifty participants under the tutelage of ten pros. What a great ratio! At noon we broke for lunch catered by Gino Russo's Resaurant. All day long we were enjoying Poweraide and Coca Cola products from our friend John Holbrook. We also had the use of a radar gun from the Durham Bulls to test our serving speeds. Fastest adult was 97 MPH and the fastest child (Taylor Bucklin) was 92 MPH! Yikes, I think he might give me some trouble down the line...

At 1:30 we started our Pro/Am rotation on seven courts. Three sponsor amateurs played with one pro on each court for about fifteen minutes and then moved on to the next court and new pro. Everyone got a chance to play with and/or against Vilas, Wade, Lloyd and all our other local pros. My threesome got in approx. 60 games. What a unique opportunity and what a WORKOUT! We cleaned up and packed up the last banners by 4:03pm. The skies opened up at 4:04!

6:30pm: the doors opened to The CCC main clubhouse for the "Paint the Town Pink" Gala dinner/dance. Black tie was prevalent and the women were dressed to the nines. Pink was a popular style and accessory color, I wonder why :) Some ridiculous guy even showed up wearing a pink boa and a pink "pimp" hat! I, of course, wore my green tails/white tie outfit. There were tables upon tables of Silent Auction items. Dale Siler gave a courageous and touching introduction and blessing. The food was superb. It was so great to see so many familiar faces and be able to meet so many new supporters. Our speaker was Leslie Mouton, an award winning Journalist and Anchorwoman from San Antonio and a breast cancer survivor. She gave a really truthful and emotional look into her ordeal with BC and a upbeat look at life for all of us to follow. Our live auction, led by John Lloyd, was great fun and we raised over $6000. The Silent Auction was again successful also raising over $6000. Dancing to "Soul Kitchen" continued on well after midnight!

Sunday morning brought a perfectly beautiful day in the 70's. We started setting up banners, ribbons, health exhibitor tables and box seating over at our second venue, the Raleigh Racquet Club. There was a sponsor's lunch at noon. At 1:15 we opened the event with GuillermoVilas playing with Madison Lane (a local radio personality - Sunny 93.9) against Virginia Wade and Chad Sokol (our NBC17 weekend Anchor). Lots of laughs and cheers :) We continued on with the mixed doubles, ladies doubles and men's doubles with our local pros and celebrities joining our "Big Three". We got to see some FANTASTIC TENNIS, up close and personal!
Everything wound down around 4:15 and our volunteers stepped up to the plate to put the place back into its original form.

This obviously is the condensed version. So much goes into an event like this and I won't even try to list off all of the people who put their hearts and souls into this in many different ways. We are growing every year with tremendous support. As soon as we're done with all of this year's event, we'll be starting on next year's, October 7th, 8th & 9th, 2005. In the weeks to come we will have updated photo galleries posted on our website. This was a stupendous start for "Breast Cancer Awareness Month"! Women need to continue monthly self-exams and get that mammogram done!! I wish you all health and happiness and remember to live life day to day. We only have one life, so enjoy it, and help others do the same.

Much love,
Rob

View images from this event - click here