Yatooma Foundation’s Champion for the Kids 2 Day Event

The Fifth Annual Champions for the Kids VIP Dinner/Auction attracted 287 to the Townsend Hotel. During the cocktail hour, Simone Vitale made music in the tent adjacent to the ballroom lobby where silent auction items were displayed and garnered some $35,000 in bids. Looking very dapper in an outfit made for him by Paul Cicchini Custom Clothiers, Jamal Newberry, the five-year-old son of last year’s Bridge to the Future Award recipient, welcomed the guests to the ballroom and introduced Yatooma who gave the invocation. Two award presentations highlighted the dinner program. One was a moving video story of the 2010 Bridge to the Future Award recipient Taline Kalandjian, who, with help from Yatooma’s Foundation for the Kids, successfully kept her family of three other siblings together after both of their parents died. Another was the Champion Award, presented to Art Van Elslander for underwriting the foundation’s Extreme Christmas Makeover for the family of April Moody, whose little daughter Casi Cook presented the award. After dinner Dan Stahl got folks to bid $80,000 in the live auction. This included the $4,000 somebody paid for a dinner party in Vicki & Tom Celani’s wine cellar.

The next day 137 golfers played Oakland Hills Country Club’s North or South course. Kelly Duff, Bob Brown, Adam Brozo and Tom Carroll comprised the north course winning foursome; Greg Turcotte, Chuck Christie, Mark Merucci, Bill Dorough and George Blaha comprised the south course winners: Longest drives were hit by Cliff Stewart and Kelly Crawford (north course); Brian Clark and Melanie West (south course). Closest to the pin winners were Scott Williamson (north course) and Satish Bajaj (south course.) The Fifth Annual Champions for the Kids two-day event grossed nearly $370,000. Go to www.forthekidsfoundation.org for more information about the foundation Yatooma founded in memory of his father.

(Pictured: Jamal Newberry with Norman Yatooma)

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