By Elizabeth Gillingham

The Patrick Henry High School Alumni Association is excited to announce its sixth annual Patrick Henry High School Alumni Association Golf Tournament and Reunion BBQ for its 41,000 alumni that will take place on Monday, Nov. 6, on the two 18-hole courses of Admiral Baker Golf Course & Clubhouse.

The event — anticipated to be a sell-out — will include:

• An exceptional golfing experience and complimentary gifts for the first 250 registered participants.
• A wonderful BBQ dinner (anticipating over 400 attendees).
• PHHS band and cheerleader performances.
• A scholarship and awards banquet.
• Entertaining silent and live auctions.
• A raffle.

PHHS hopes that you and/or your organization will consider supporting this year’s tournament through your participation, underwriting sponsorship, or by providing a tee prize, a raffle or a live or silent auction item(s).

Our goal is to raise $60,000 to benefit these programs and facilities:

• Senior Night Scholarship Awards.
• Patriot athletics.
• Patrick Henry arts, media and entertainment programs.
• Engineering & Design Academy.
• Other projects at the school.

All donations are tax deductible to the extent provided by law. This is a 100 percent volunteer effort. All net proceeds, overseen by the PHHS Alumni Association, Inc. board of directors, will directly benefit programs and facilities at the school.

To date, the Alumni Association has raised over $500,000 through this event and the generous donations made. During this current school year, at the request of the administration, the Alumni Association donated new basketball backboards on all outside courts, replacing the nearly 50-year-old metal boards originally supplied at the school; new headsets to be used during gameday by the football team coaches; and equipment and uniforms to other Henry sports.

The Alumni Association also arranged and financially supported the donation of more than $200,000 worth of nearly new furniture to outfit the 40-plus offices of the school’s Main Office and Counseling building and ordered 38 new Dell PCs and 22-inch monitors to replace the 10-year-old units in the Campus Computer Lab — a facility utilized by the entire faculty and student body.

The new PHAME theater and performing arts classroom complex is now in use and is gorgeous! Thanks to a roughly $35,000 investment from the Alumni Association, the new PHHS Alumni Conference Room is a state-of-the-art facility that will support parent communication and instructional needs in small group settings for years to come. This 12-by-24-foot room has leather seating for 14 people and is outfitted with wireless audio and video conferencing equipment, a PC, a wall-mounted iPad (as an A/V controller), and a 70-inch Sharp Aquos touchscreen LED Smart Board (allows viewing of theater programs, TV, laptop presentations, and writing on the screen via laptops or manually with a special writing pen).

The main wall of the room provides the backdrop for our initial class of 20 PHHS Alumni Hall of Famers with portraits and name badges listing their many achievements. The main thought behind the Hall/Wall of Fame is to serve as inspiration to the current student body as well as share the rich history of the school to the community through some of its honored graduates. A side benefit is that at least two of these honorees have given in excess of $65,000 to the Alumni Association since then. Please visit our website at PatriotAlumni.org or contact Kevin Carlson at [email protected] for additional information.

To help or get involve, you can:

• Encourage your friends/fellow alumni to register with the Alumni Association.
• Send a check or go online at org/registration.htm to sign-up now for our Nov. 6, 2017 event. A fun time is guaranteed only if you attend.
• Become a sponsor, and share your business/organization with other Patriots at org/sponsors.htm. You will be listed in the Tournament Program and on our website for at least a year.
• Donate a silent or live auction item for our Nov. 6 event. This year, we will be using Gesture bidding software which will enable online bidding to all interested parties whether you’re able to personally attend or not.
• Send a donation to our 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. It’s tax-deductible (consult your tax advisor for details) and we will make great use of it as we have very low administrative expenses and no paid staff.

—Elizabeth Gillingham is principal of Patrick Henry High School.