Batavia Woman's Club raised $29K for Mutual Ground

In turning over a $29,000 check to domestic violence shelter Mutual Ground, the Batavia Woman's Club knows one thing for sure. Its annual Fall Luncheon & Fashion Show brings in plenty of patrons and outside support to help local organizations.

It wasn't always that way, even though the club, now 126 years old, had events called "style shows" in the 1970s and a spattering of other fashion events through the years. For any of the events to raise more than $10,000 was unlikely.

But the wheels were in motion to change that when the club decided about 15 years ago to consistently stage the fall event.

"Up until about four or five years ago, it never made more than $10,000, but we made the $29,000 this year and it has been going up," fashion show chairman Cynthia Kieckhefer said.

Kieckhefer has been in charge of the last three shows, and her vision for what it could be and how members could make it happen has clearly come into focus.

"When I volunteered to do the fashion show, I made it a point to use only local shops and focus on community businesses," she said. "It was really important that we featured fashions for women of all shapes and sizes."

Nothing makes a fashion show fall flat faster than attendees seeing models just wearing size 2 and realizing that would never work for them, Kieckhefer noted.

When researching local charities to support, Kieckhefer wanted the organization to be a good fit for the woman's club.

"I asked Mayor Jeff Schielke and he suggested Mutual Ground, which has a Batavia office," she said. "I interviewed director Michelle Meyer and could see their needs and that they were a good fit for us."

Kieckhefer acknowledges the fashion show has success because the club itself has grown to about 75 to 80 members. "For a philanthropic volunteer organization to be growing at 10 to 15 percent a year is pretty phenomenal," she said.

"This is not only about me, it's about the club," Kieckhefer added. "It's a lot of work, but I like work and I am motivated to help these charities and would be willing to do this every year … but we do need new blood and more people."

Recalling the Explorers:

Our schools have all sorts of vocational and internship programs for students to advance knowledge and skills while determining what the future may hold for them.

Last year, I wrote about the St. Charles School District's "INCubatoredu" program, encouraging young entrepreneurs to create products and present them in a "Shark Tank" type of competition at the end of a school year.

I was thinking about these sorts of programs again after watching an old TV show in which some kids, probably from the 1950s, were glancing through Explorer Club magazines and dreaming about being scientists and astronauts.

That concept morphed into Career Explorers at the schools more than 30 years ago.

High school students interested in journalism used to come to my office in the evening once a week for a couple of months to learn about the newspaper business.

During his teaching career at St. Charles East, current St. Charles Mayor Ray Rogina knew a thing or two about how students could best thrive.

As the head of the high school business education department, he teamed with technology education head Jim Holderfield to follow a directive from then-Superintendent John Vanko and created an internship program in the mid-1990s.

"We had some great stories come out of that program," Rogina said. "We had a kid who got to scrub up and observe an open-heart surgery, which was just unbelievable."

One other student spent time with St. Charles funeral home director Rick Yurs to learn about the business.

"After the internship was complete, Rick told me this kid was really good, and he had done as well or better than some college kids," Rogina said.

"We were really proud of that program, and it is still going strong in some form at both North and East high schools," he added.

Logging some steps:

It would be difficult to categorize snow shoveling as something I really enjoy, but if done properly with my aging body, it does accomplish something: It really piles on the steps on your FitBit monitor quickly.

So, our recent snow has at least helped me reach a daily steps goal.

That one wish:

If a genie actually granted me a wish, I have come to believe it would be this: That our pet dogs could live at least two or three times longer than they do now.

But, there are no genies coming anytime soon, so we're left to deal with these relatively short bursts of unconditional love and loyalty.

I thought about this again after seeing Renee Emma of Geneva posting on Facebook that her family had to put down their dog, and she had stopped at Bentley's Pet Stuff in Batavia to pick up a treat for her pet's final night.

Because she was emotional about such a task, the employee and owner comforted her and gave her a memorial candle to honor her pet.

That's not just pet stuff, that's good stuff.

dheun@sbcglobal.net