Leukemia Society Scores Success
By day, many of them are mild-mannered accounting types, diligently totaling and deducting and amortizing.
But turn them loose on a Saturday night in a room full of red decorations and you can kiss that old stereotype goodby.
And when the cause is one with an attractive balance sheet, the fiscally oriented have even more fun. That’s why the Leukemia Society of America is particularly appealing to accountants and businessmen, said Rick McCarthy, president of the society’s Tri-County chapter, at its annual fund-raiser at the Registry Hotel in Irvine.
“Five out of seven of our board members are accountants,” said McCarthy, who confessed to being one of the five. “It’s easy to understand. The numbers are impressive.”
For one thing, he said, 82% of the money raised by the Leukemia Society goes directly to the cause, thanks to an army of volunteers that keeps fund-raising costs down. For another, the fight against the various forms of leukemia is “a success story in the making,” according to McCarthy. “The cure rate with Hodgkin’s disease is between 75% and 90%. For childhood leukemias, it’s 50%, and for adults, it’s between 30% and 50%.”
More numbers: The $250-a-couple event attracted more than 100 guests and netted $13,500, McCarthy estimated.
McCarthy’s stand-up accountant routine (“CPAs are known for walking into an empty room and just kind of blending in”) evoked waves of empathic chuckles, but the loudest whoops of the evening came when event chairman Peter DiMicelli, a Tustin caterer and member of the society’s board of trustees, explained the theme of the affair, “An Evening to Welcome Sadie to the ‘80s.”
“Ladies, this is your night,” he said. “Men, if you’re asked to dance, or whatever, you must do what the ladies ask.”
“We’re in trouble now,” one husband muttered. But Mike Lewis, chief financial officer at Emulex Corp. in Costa Mesa and honorary co-chairman, said he didn’t expect any surprises because his wife, Kathy Braun, honorary co-chairwoman and vice-president of marketing for Western Digital Corp. in Irvine, “has never had any trouble being assertive.”
The Sadie in the event theme referred to Sadie Hawkins of the late cartoonist Al Capp’s “Li’l Abner” strip. Capp’s Sadie Hawkins Day gave women a chance to chase men. “Nobody knows when Sadie Hawkins Day is supposed to be,” DiMicelli said. ‘So, we figured since this was Leap Year and almost Leap Day, it might as well be tonight.”
DiMicelli explained he chose red for the decor because it “makes people want to party.” Among guests was Stephen Mistich, a broad-shouldered former oil rig worker from Mission Viejo who evoked tears from some when he addressed the crowd. A victim of chronic granulocytic leukemia and one of the society’s “poster patients,” Mistich, 34, has lived more than two years with the disease.
“When you have a disease like this you feel alone so much of the time,” he said. “But looking at all these people here tonight, I can’t feel alone.”
Another poster patient, 12-year-old David Whytock of Tustin, whose acute lymphocytic leukemia is now in remission, wore his first-ever tuxedo and proclaimed it and the event “pretty cool.”
