How to go
What: 92nd annual Charity Ball
When: 6 p.m. social hour; 7 p.m. dinner, Dec. 1
Where: Pendleton Art Center, Middletown
Cost: $50 per person or $100 per couple; contributing as a Grand Patron $150, includes dinner and a listing in the program. College age students may attend for $25. Checks should be sent to: Barbara Brown, Middletown Area Federation of Women’s Clubs, 4401-D Bonita Drive, Middletown, OH 45044.
Middletown’s oldest running event, the Charity Ball, returns for its 92nd annual year with a few new twists.
Tammi Foreman Thompson, who along with her boyfriend Dan Picard is serving as chair of the event, said the committee is trying to attract younger patrons to the dance, sponsored by the Middletown Area Federation of Women’s Club.
She said a disc jockey has been hired to play music when the Finale — The Sextet Band, is on break; a coffee and dessert bar has been added; and a professional decorator has been hired to take the decorations “over the top.”
Proceeds from this year’s event will go toward the MAFWC Endowment to assist uninsured or underinsured women in the Middletown area. This endowment was established at Atrium Medical Center, Premier Health Campus-Middletown in honor of the 90th year of the Charity Ball in 2010.
Last year’s event, the first at the Pendleton, raised $18,000, and LaVonne Michael, president of the group, said the goal this year is $100,000. She said the organization, unlike previous years, has held monthly fund raisers, and hopes to present a check to the hospital in April.
Michael is predicting “a record year.”
Thompson was born, raised and resides in Monroe. She is a graduate of Miami University, Magna Cum Laud, with a degree in elementary education. She has been a member of the Xi Lambda Pi Chapter of Beta Sigma Phi in Middletown for many years and has served in many capacities. She also served as first vice president for the MAFWC and has worked on several Charity Ball committees. She has four children.
Picard, the city’s vice mayor, was born in Fort Kent, Maine and lived in a variety of places since his father was in the paper industry. He then went to the University Of Dayton School Of Law and graduated in 1981. After college, he started his own practice of law in Middletown. In 1985, he joined the law firm of Frost Brown Todd (formerly Frost & Jacobs) and practiced law with them until 2002 when he left to go to work in a family business, Picard Paper Processing, Inc. for seven years. In March 2009, he returned to the private practice of law with an office in Monroe. He has three children.
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