Philanthropy - Celebrity Waiter Fundraiser - Mike Kunath
5/13/2004
'The Gang' serves its 20th lunch
Puget Sound Business Journal by Mike Flynn
Thursday, May 13, 2004
The nation's most successful Celebrity Waiter fund-raising luncheon turns 20 Friday, and "The Gang" of nine local business people who organized the first one were to be honored at the splashy, carnivalesque luncheon at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle.
The Leukemia Society has been the beneficiary of this fund-raising luncheon and auction from the outset, and this year's goal is to have the 300-plus attendees raise $400,000 during the couple of hours of fun and bidding.
"This is the world leader of raising money for leukemia research," enthuses Dick Friel, one of the nine originals. He and his wife, Sharon, make this a regular stop on the list of charity auctions for which they serve as auctioneers throughout the year, and he's been doing that from the outset of the event.
"The original concept was just a room full of celebrities dressed in tuxes acting as waiters at what was basically a high-priced lunch for leukemia," Friel adds.
Mike Kunath, principal in the portfolio-management firm Kunath, Karren, Rinne & Atkin, and another of the originals, recalls that the first event "raised about $15,000."
Kunath says that the early events involved business and community "celebrities," "mostly men," dressed in tuxes without their jackets on, but he adds that "about the third year, I came dressed as a waitress and the guys decided I was a poor substitute for the real thing."
"As a result, two things happened," says Kunath. "First, we began having women celebrities, and, second, the idea took hold of the waiters all dressing up in some sort of costumes, eventually inviting their table guests to take part in the theme."
"It became clear that the crazier the better was the rule," says Friel. "We decided the room had to be the theater, not what was happening on stage."
Asked about memorable auction items, both Friel and Kunath recalled the time Phil Smart Jr., another of the founding nine, put up for auction what they recall as "a first-of-its-model Mercedes sports car for which delivery was several years after order, but we had one available right then."
As Kunath remembers, "Mike Bledsoe (another of the nine) advertised nationally that the car would be available at auction at the Celebrity Waiter event, then he set up phone lines so out-of-area bidders could participate in a live auction for one hour. The car went for a fortune."
Most major cities have a celebrity waiter event to benefit leukemia, but "they pale next to ours," boasts Kunath. "Most are pretty formal and don't raise more than about $50,000."
While many local business, political and community leaders have attended and spent money at one or more of the Celebrity Waiter luncheons over the years, about half of the waiters and table guests are annual returnees, according to Friel, who, as auctioneer, has the opportunity to look out over the crowd for familiar faces each year.
Those who will be honored Friday for their two decades of commitment, in addition to Bledsoe, Friel, Gene Juarez, Kunath and Smart, are Dave Andrews, Ron Neubauer, Jim Rutherford and Brooks Whittle.
I asked Juarez, the successful operator of the chain of salons and spas that bears his name, to sum up his purpose in being involved over the years, to which he said: "It has a noble purpose and represented an opportunity to collect friends that I knew to be high achievers and work with them on a common cause while having a lot of fun doing it."
To read this on the web, visit: http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2004/05/17/editorial2.html?surround=etf