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Initially, it appeared as if the 17th annual Discovery Ball had pulled in a record-breaking $3.25 million in support of Boston’s renowned Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund. Before the band stopped playing, however, the projected total had to be adjusted slightly when word came that Ruth and Carl Shapiro had decided to part with some spare change in their pockets and tossed an extra $27 million into the kitty for good measure.
Roughly 650 glamourati in full black-tie plumage packed Palm Beach’s Mar-A-Lago Club for a night of mingling, dining, dancing, and bidding. Mr. Tom Quick was on hand to auction off a 10.10 carat diamond tennis bracelet as well as the first pitch at a Boston Red Sox game donated by Red Sox President Larry Lucino.
Michelle and Howard Kessler officiated as chaircouple and Phyllis Krock as honorary chairwoman of the ball. A plethora of grand benefactors had opened their hearts and their wallets, among them Phyllis and Paul Fireman, Nancy and Willima Rollnick, Tiffany Spadafora and George Cloutier; and Calibre, Wachovia’s Family Office, and Giorgio Armani on the corporate side.
Along with rotary telephones and muzzle-loading blunderbusses, the scourge of cancer must be consigned to the dustbin of history once and for all. Courtesy the generosity of all involved, the world has just inched $30 million closer to that goal.
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