Nearly $2,400 raised at local Alzheimer's dinnr

By Ken Johnston
Editor

The 4th Annual Linda Johnston Memorial Alzheimer’s Dinner was another great success!
This year’s tally was down a bit from last year coming in at $2,373! Last year it was about $2,500.
Weeks of work culminated as a very impressive penny table featured 62 draws with close to 175 prizes on it! It raised over $1,000 of the grand total for the event! Many businesses and individuals kept penny table coordinator Marlene McNally and her chauffeur Bob Johnston busy collecting prizes over the past few weeks and McNally was very pleased with the final results of the table.
Johnston also had another role at the event. He was the master chef, cooking the juiciest and delicious roast beef! He and his assistants Jim Armstrong and Ken Johnston were in the kitchen around 10:30 a.m. cooking all day!
For the second year in a row, Darlene Armstrong and her daughter Theresa Sharp looked after the desserts and they did not disappoint, producing and donating homemade apple crisp and ice cream for everyone!
This marked the first year that Anne Mailloux and Norma-Jean Johnston each prepared and donated the vegetables featuring corn and carrots!
Sue Armstrong prepared the coleslaw again this year, tantalizing everyone’s taste buds!
Linda Johnston's sister Jennette Cross manned her usual post collecting tickets at the door.
For the second year Ken Johnston and Kim Brown donated homemade horseradish to garnish the beef! It was so well received that with about 10 people left they ran out!
Tom Irvine and his daughter Pam Pearson were this year’s delivery people dropping off about a dozen dinners to shut-ins around Rainy River.
Brand new Executive Director of the Kenora-Rainy River Alzheimer Society, Lynn Moffatt, attended her first RR dinner and was very pleased. “What a wonderful event on Saturday and very well organized. It was very nice to meet so many people from the Rainy River Community.” She gave a brief speech introducing herself and talking about some of the services the society offers. She noted that they will have a new employee on staff shortly that will be travelling to this area to deliver services.
Moffatt also helped conduct the penny table draws with Anne Mailloux and Marlene McNally.
The silent auction saw Florence Newman of RR the lucky winner of the Chickadee Delight chair for $120. Barb Marmus of Kenora won the Flower Power chair for $59.
Winning the separate draws were Tom O’Connor of Kenora-Afghan, Cam Hanson of RR-drill and Harry Arnould of RR-GPS.
The dinner was a complete sell out and many people came in and played the penny table throughout the afternoon even though they were not attending the dinner! “We are very pleased with the support the community, the businesses and all our volunteers continue to give this event,” said event chair Ken Johnston on Monday.
This was the first year that the committee had done more dinners without Linda Johnston. “She organized the first three and then we lost her to cancer. This was the fourth dinner named after her memory. I think she would be very pleased that her hard work continues to this day,” concluded Ken Johnston.