The Town and Country Garden Club has felt how devastating cancer can be, as five members of the club have passed away from the disease, and even more have been affected.
But on Wednesday night, the club pushed back against cancer by hosting its November Auction, with all proceeds going to the American Cancer Society to support cancer research.
“We’ve been doing this auction for cancer since JoAnn Graham, who had been president of the club, passed away in 2012,” current club President Dot Reichle said. “We’ve had five members who have (passed away) and then we have members who have survived cancer. So we do it all in their honor and memory.”
Reichle said the club took a break from the annual auctions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the auction returned again this year. The auction typically includes both a live portion and silent auction tables, as it did again this year.
At Wednesday night’s auction, on one of the silent auction tables, the club also displayed a sign with all of the names of club members who had passed away from cancer, including Doris Eaves, JoAnn Graham, Monty Hatcher, Beth Jolly and Anna McIntyre.
“Probably not a member in our club has not been affected by cancer,” Reichle said.
Besides the silent auction tables and live auction, Club Vice President Sarah Koehler also arranged a special vintage section of this year’s sale to raise even more money for the cause.
Koehler said club members donated all of the items for auction, including the new items and the vintage items. Many of the vintage items, she said, came directly from members’ homes. Altogether, with the silent auction, live auction and vintage store, Koehler said, the fundraiser took club members about four months to put together.
This year’s live auction included items like a McCarty tray, a vintage purse and a weekend lake getaway. But the auction also included a special addition: A painting of flowers on a porch painted by McIntyre before her passing.
Marianna Wright, a long-time club member, said McIntyre’s husband donated the piece to the club to be auctioned on Thursday night.
Seeing the auction and the painting brought up fond memories of friends that had passed away, including a memory of visiting McIntyre’s painting studio.
Wright believes that McIntyre would be proud to know a painting she created was bid on to fight cancer, as the auction acts as the club’s way to push back against the disease.
“One of my dearest friends, Anna McIntyre, had passed away from cancer,” Wright said. “It was an incurable cancer. Since then, there are so many members of our club who have passed away from some kind of cancer. People who are dearly loved and very very missed. (The auction) was an answer to a deep need we all had to do something.”
Other club members also expressed their desire to take a stand against the disease that took their friends from them. The evening’s auctioneer, Marion McEwen, often interjected in her selling that this was “for a good cause,” encouraging bidding to go even higher.
Altogether, Reichle said, this year’s auction raised about $6,000, which is the most the auction has ever raised. The live auction alone raised more than $1,600.
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