What's Up

    At a spring meeting of the development committee of Summit
Aids Housing Corp., chairperson Sandy Bee Lynn and Wanda
Morris had an inspired idea for a fund raiser to celebrate the
merger of SAHC with NEOFTA - an art auction. That's when
the trouble started.

    The next meeting was held at Michael Owen's Northside
Restaurant to discuss roles of persons on the committee,
identify persons within the community that might be interested
in participating in, or contributing to the event, and designating
the chairpersons. After we retuned from the restroom, we
discovered that we would be heading up the event. Let that be
a lesson to us all.

    Everyone was so excited about working on the project that
we had committee chairpersons within a week. David Juresk
from the Tell Company and Michael Owen secured the AES
Building as our site and handled the logistics, Debbie Robinson
from The Atrium Cafe and Randy Miller agreed to coordinate
the food, and Don Brown volunteered to chair the evening
program committee. Ron Hill and Courtney Calhoun helped us
with the community outreach, Dave Johnson coordinated
volunteers, and Elinore Marsh Stormer coordinated activities
for the event. Our choice for Honorary Chairpersons, Lisa and
Don Drumm, graciously agreed to serve in this role with the
provision that they would not be figureheads; but would work
on the project, contribute art from their gallery, and design a
special piece of art for the event. I hope that now you can
appreciate the difficulty we were having as Co-Chairs. We
could not stop the enthusiasm from volunteers that were
knocking down the door to help. On top of everything, Akron
General Medical Center, Miller's, (party rental center)
Federal Express, WEWS, WKDD, and GenCorp became
corporate sponsors of the event.

    The Committee Chairpersons met almost every week at
Chez Evans. The trusty dog Ian served as watch dog so no one
would know what we were planning. It was very difficult to keep
up with all of the donations that Mike David turned in every
week. Jill Bacon, the curator of the auction, came to report the
tremendous response that she was getting from her requests for
art. Carolyn Carr charmed everyone into providing media
coverage and entertained us in the process. Sue Henderson and
Wanda provided all of our support services. The only person that
seemed bored was Roberta Aber, the finance chair, who kept
asking " Is there simply nothing that we are paying for?" We
would soon make her pay for her boredom as she also had to
manage all the ticket and art sale money