December 4, 2007

Willow Glen Foundation fund-raiser crowds Garden Theater

By Carol Rosen
Editor

The Willow Glen Foundation held its annual fall Wine Tasting and Auction fund-raiser and people of all ages attended. That included 14-week-old Rhys Clacys, who is slated to graduate with the class of 2025.

The venue for the Willow Glen Foundation’s annual fund-raiser for the middle and high schools is filled with a large crowd tasting wine, cheese, chocolates and gelato and bidding on items at the silent auction.

For the second year in a row, the foundation, which supports activities for Willow Glen Middle and High Schools, experienced high attendance thanks to the atrium in the Garden Theater Building, which was donated by SDS/NexGen Real Estate and Investments. More than 300 people were there and included some political celebrities, such as District 6 Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio and former Councilwoman and Vice Mayor Cindy Chavez along with her husband Mike Potter, who works for Assemblyman Joe Coto and Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager.

Others attending included Pam Foley, the San Jose Unified School District Board vice president and trustee from the Willow Glen area, Willow Glen High School Principal Hannon McGee and Willow Glen Middle School Principal Erin Green.
Gross receipts appeared to be more than $27,000, above the $25,000 collected a year ago and more than twice the $12,000 collected in 2005.The larger venue also allows increased activity including two silent auctions, a live auction, wine tasting from six wineries, cheeses provided by the Grapevine, chocolates from Schurras, hors d’oeuvres provided by Johanson & Yau and coffee provided by Peets Coffee and Tea. Also donating their services was The Band, made up of Roy Kaufmann, Karin and Bob Johnson and Brian Brockhouse.

The wine was offered by Sonnet Wine Cellars, Kathryn Kennedy Winery, Stroth-Hall Cellars, TreRicci, Sauvage and Chumeia Winery. Two items were back by popular demand--a Surfin’ Safari, including breakfast and a ride in his 1949 Woody with SJUSD Superintendent Don Iglesias, and a dinner for 10 people with Principals Green and McGee and trustee Foley prepared and hosted by Maria Fox and Barbara Bremner. Four couples bid $400 per couple to attend a French dinner prepared by McGee and Kim and Rick Guptil.

Local celebrities included (from the left) Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio, Willow Glen Middle School Principal Erin Green and Mike Potter from Assemblymember Joe Coto’s office.

Other live auction items included a room makeover courtesy of Mike Moody Painting along with a consult with designer Victoria Thorne, two club level tickets to a February Sharks game and a cooking workshop and dinner by Katrina Morkner for four adults including babysitting. The live auction netted $2,775 for the foundation.

A number of Foundation volunteers helped make this year's program successful. These included David Heiman, who chaired the event, Auction chair Barbara Bremner, Ticket chair Robin Denton, auctioneer Tom Cremer-the voice of Willow Glen sports, Public Relations chair Beth Martinez, food chair Christine Bramer and committee members Becky Hettema, Michele Bertolone, and Mary Danze.

Sponsors included a number of businesses—too numerous to name--throughout Willow Glen and San Jose as well as parents and friends of the foundation. Some of the more energetic were the cleanup crew, who all attend Willow Glen Middle School. These included Alex and Ian Fox, Steven Moran, Eddie Roro, Julian Lietze and Dakota Bramer.

Besides the HOSTS program, which is one-on-one mentoring with students, the foundation also helps support the schools’ robotics programs, music and performing arts, college and career counseling and special needs for core class programs such as electronic balances for chemistry, graphing calculator projectors for math and an online writing assessment tool for English.