TUCSON, Ariz. — First City Club in Savannah played an important role in the world's largest one-day golf and dining event Friday.
Along with more than 140 other golf, country clubs and sports clubs across the country, First City Club took part in a huge charitable fundraising event called The ClubCorp Charity Classic: Celebrating a Legacy.
The nationwide affair was expected to involve more than 25,000 club members, guests and patrons in golf tournaments, dining and social functions, all with the goal of raising $5 million for national and local nonprofit causes.
Half of the Classic's proceeds will go to the Muscular Dystrophy Association's Augie's Quest research initiative, an aggressive effort to find treatments and cures for the paralyzing disease ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease).
Augie Nieto, who along with his wife, Lynne, co-chairs MDA's ALS Division, said, "I'm awed by the combined energy and spirit of this great endeavor. It's commitment of this kind that eventually will put an end to the ravages of ALS." Nieto received an ALS diagnosis in 2005.
Twenty-five percent of funds raised by the Classic will go to ClubCorp's Employee Partners Care Foundation, a fund created to help the organization's employees and families during times of crisis. The remaining 25 percent will be allocated to a local or national charity according to the wishes of First City Club.
Dallas-based ClubCorp and its affiliates own and operate 170 golf courses, country clubs, private business and sports clubs and resorts. ClubCorp created the Charity Classic last year, and the fledgling effort raised more than $1.6 million for Augie's Quest and other philanthropic organizations.
"The scope and philanthropy of this ClubCorp undertaking are magnificent," said MDA National Chairman Jerry Lewis.
MDA is a voluntary health agency working to defeat muscular dystrophy and other related diseases through programs of worldwide research, comprehensive patient and community services, and far-reaching professional and public health education.
The Association's programs are funded almost entirely by individual private contributors