More than 100 friends and neighbors gathered at Treadwell Park on Monday evening for a Battery Park City Cares fund raiser to aid victims from a slew of recent hurricanes.
The assembled crowd (which included several senior staff from the Battery Park City Authority) shared drinks and food (donated, along with the space, by Treadwell Park) as they bargained with each other over raffled prizes donated by local small businesses — such as Miramar and Harry’s Italian restaurants and T. Edward Wines.
These elements, by themselves, would have made for a successful evening. But, just as Gateway resident and de facto emcee Bruce Katz was announcing the winners of the last handful of raffle prizes, an anonymous donor sitting at the back of the room conveyed to the podium a whispered pledge to contribute an additional $1,000 — with the proviso that the rest of the audience collectively pony up the same amount.
As Mr. Katz spurred and urged on the crowd, contributors emptied their pockets of cash, and even loose change. Within a few minutes, the tally has passed the halfway mark, inching above $500. But then, the momentum seemed to stall. Undeterred, Mr. Katz reignited the enthusiasm in the room by pledging $100 of his own, which inspired a dozen-plus other people to break out checkbooks, and even turn business cards into promissory notes by hastily scrawling amounts on the back. With 15 minutes the total topped $900, and then… $1000. This, in turn, triggered the matching pledge from the nameless benefactor.
When the counting was done, Battery Park City Cares had raised more than $7,400 for victims of recent, deadly storms — many of whom live in communities that gave generously to Lower Manhattan in the months after September 11, 2001.