The Advisory Council of FAU’s Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies organized a special event highlighted by actress Sharon Gless. More than $30,000 was raised for scholarships. LEFT: (l-r, front) Mary Wong, Gless, Lalita Janke, and Gabriela Tortoledo Mendoza; (back) Marina Laurel Wilson, Kathryn Johnston, Lynn McNutt, Des Gallant and Jan Savarick.
Photo provided
Kenneth Himmel, president and CEO of Related Urban, spoke at the second such event of the season, showing off new renderings for future designs at CityPlace in West Palm Beach as well as other large-scale, mixed-use projects around the globe. ‘We are honored to have Mr. Himmel here with us today,’ Kravis Center Board Chairman Michael Bracci said. ‘Mr. Himmel is an expert in creating thriving developments that bring forth the energy and vitality of an urban destination that resonates with existing local lifestyle and culture.’ ABOVE: Antonio Seminario and Marti LaTour. Photo provided by Capehart
Barbara Schmidt and Carolyn Cunningham welcomed Singhvi Jewels and its elegant, hand-crafted jewelry to benefit the Spirit of Giving. The collection consisted of 18-karat gold and sterling-silver pieces made by international designer Sudi Singhvi. The event took place on a yacht at the marina, where 10 percent of sales went to the nonprofit, resulting in nearly $5,000 being raised for community programs. Spirit of Giving unites more than 60 South Florida agencies that provide assistance to children and families in need. ABOVE: (l-r) Spirit of Giving Executive Director Sue Diener, Cunningham, Schmidt and Singhvi. Photo provided
More than 400 guests turned out for the 63rd installment of one of the oldest galas in Palm Beach County benefiting the Bethesda Hospital Foundation. A spirited Bid From the Heart prompted guests to raise their paddles and pledge nearly $500,000. Proceeds from that, plus sponsorships, raffle-ticket sales and the live auction, will be used to purchase a 3-D mammogram machine with biopsy capabilities.
ABOVE: (l-r) Kyle and Jessica McAfee and Drs. Carol and Robert Adami, honorary chairs. BELOW: (l-r) Seran Glanfield, Lianne Cavell and Christina White.
Photos provided by Downtown Photo
The Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County named David Wooten as the Youth of the Year. The 16-year-old accepted the honor in front of an inspired audience of 250 that included donors and supporters of the nonprofit. Seven teenagers representing the club competed for the award and all received four-year scholarships, with Wooten also getting free room and board. ABOVE: (l-r) Tom Stanley, John Smith and Greg Reynolds. Photo provided by Tracey Benson Photography
The Friends of Gumbo Limbo celebrated a year's worth of environmental education and preservation and had both silent and live auctions to raise funds for programs at the nature center. Platinum sponsor for the event was the Ajram Family Foundation. ABOVE: Elie Ajram, Genny Ajram and Pierrette Ajram. Photo provided
For more than 25 years, Wayside House’s shopping extravaganza has been a much-anticipated staple of the Delray Beach social season. This year was no exception. The four-day event included 40 vendors of eclectic merchandise from throughout the country and brought in $225,000 thanks to sponsorships and attendance at the preview party. TOP: (l-r) Spring Boutique & Trunk Show chairwoman Martha Grimm, Lisa Hayes Jankowski and Darcy Weber. BOTTOM: Sponsors Michael and Charlotte Buxton.
Photos provided
The Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County’s 37th annual gala raised nearly $1.4 million, breaking all records. Guests smiled as members of the Max M. Fisher Boys & Girls Club joined ballroom dancers in a spirited performance and homage to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. A live auction garnered the highest bid of the evening — $25,000 — for a trip to Australia and the Great Barrier Reef. ABOVE: Benefactors Jeannie and Thomas Rutherfoord. Photo provided
Players from local clubs enjoyed a round of golf while raising funds for Paul's Place, an after-school program that is part of Delray Beach's St. Paul's Episcopal Church community-outreach program to assist residents. Sixteen foursomes competed in the event, and more than 135 attended the dinner. Proceeds exceeded $100,000. ABOVE: Louise Vanderlip reacts after hitting a nice shot.
Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
A benefit concert held to remember Alex Schachter, one of the murdered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students, featured music by the Matt Calderin Trio, Tame the Lyons and Johan Danno. ABOVE: (l-r) George Nesmith, Alex West, Haley Shaheen, Melissa Velasco and Riley Nielson-Baker were among current and past MSD students who attended.
BELOW: Ocean Ridge resident Danno.
Photos by Tim Stepien/
The Coastal Star
The Plate: Crispy Chicken
The Place: Cornell Café, Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, 4000 Morikami Park Road, Delray Beach; 495-0233 or www.morikami.org.
The Price: $8.95
The Skinny: I really cannot say enough about how much we enjoyed our lunch at the Morikami Museum’s Cornell Café.
The café sits atop a terrace offering views of the gardens, and we had a constant breeze to keep us cool.
My Crispy Chicken offered a generous portion of stir-fried chicken with broccoli, onions and mushrooms served atop rice. The sweet soy sauce in which it was served was not cloying and complemented the vegetables and chicken.
Next visit, I want to check out one of the ample bento boxes the café offers, with chicken, dumplings, shrimp and sushi rolls, among other things. They looked outstanding.
— Scott Simmons
County Commissioner Steven Abrams with Ric Ocasek at Wentworth Gallery in Boca Raton. Photo provided
Back in 1976, The Cars was an obscure club band playing around Boston, the group’s career no doubt helped along by such gigs as the Harvard freshman class mixer. Palm Beach County Commissioner Steven Abrams missed that show, as he was a lowly freshman at the University of Pennsylvania and wouldn’t transfer to Harvard until the following autumn. By then, the music from the band’s debut album, vocals by Ric Ocasek, was echoing through the dorms along the Charles River.
Both have since enjoyed considerable success. On April 14 in Cleveland — the band’s spawning ground — The Cars will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. After graduating from Harvard, Abrams earned a law degree at George Washington University and clerked in the Reagan White House before settling down in Boca Raton. After three terms as Boca’s mayor, he now sits on the County Commission and had the honor of serving as the county’s first mayor when the office was created.
But it wasn’t until St. Patrick’s Day that the politician and his rock hero met. Also an accomplished visual artist, Ocasek was showing his work at Wentworth Gallery at Boca’s Town Center. Abrams’ wife, Debbie, who says her husband has been a huge fan of Ocasek’s for years, wrangled an invite to the opening.
“He fondly recalled his Cambridge, Mass., years,” Abrams said, but confided he didn’t buy a painting. “I wish I could afford one … because unlike some musicians who paint, he is a very good artist.”
Joining The Cars at the Hall of Fame induction will be Bon Jovi, whose leader Jon Bon Jovi is a new Palm Beacher. He laid out a cool $10 million for a 6,803-square-foot home on Ocean Boulevard just a few blocks north of The Breakers. Built in 1985, it was most recently appraised for taxable purposes at $6.5 million, but when your personal fortune is estimated at $410 million, what’s a few bucks here or there?
Of course, Bon Jovi is not the first from his band to call the Palm Beaches home. Drummer Tico Torres, also an artist of some renown, called Admirals Cove home for two decades before recently moving to Miami.
The suicide last winter of another Palm Beacher, Allman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks, stunned a legion of fans both international and local. As talented a character as he was a drummer, Trucks could be a curmudgeon with his rants on politics and mistreatment of people, but mostly, he got in his licks with a twinkle in his eye.
With that in mind, professional photographer, collaborator and friend Michael Price decided it was time for a salute, one that Trucks would have relished. He summoned diehard local friends and fans to a back-room gathering at Pizza al Fresco in Palm Beach.
With general manager Jose- Luis Duran handling the pizza delivery and the libations, the dozen or so who could make it shared Trucks and Allman stories late into the evening. They were bolstered by inside observations from Allman’s bassist, Oteil Burbridge, who just finished a tour on bass with Dead & Company, the latest assemblage of The Grateful Dead.
Burbridge, who recently moved to Boca Raton, and Allman percussionist Marc Quinones, now a resident of Lake Worth, are expected to be jamming at the Wanee Festival in Live Oak on April 20 with Les Brers, an Allman spinoff formed by Trucks.
A week before Wanee, the “Greatest Art Show Under the Sun” sets up April 13-15 in Delray Beach. The 56th Delray Affair will cram more than 500 artists, crafters and food vendors into 12 blocks along Atlantic Avenue from the tennis center to the Intracoastal Waterway. The beer and wine garden and the Delray Honda Entertainment Zone return to Old School Square, and local restaurants will again offer regular and happy hour menu specials plus the return of Delray Affair After Dark. (www.delrayaffair.com)
Elsewhere on the music scene, on April 16 at Lynn University, Atlanta-based pianist and vocalist Nancy Elton will perform a mini-recital at 2 p.m., then teach a master class — free and open to the public. That night at 7, flute legend Nestor Torres will lead a master class — also free to the public — and will return April 21 and 22 to perform in concert with the Lynn Philharmonia. (Ticket info at www.events.lynn.edu.)
Big happenings at Florida Atlantic University, too. John Kelly and wife, Carolyn, host the President’s Gala on April 7 in the FAU Stadium’s Greenberg Foundation Tower with student entertainment and art, fireworks and a live auction (tickets $300).
The gala will be the first opportunity for many FAU supporters to meet the school’s new athletic director, Brian White. He replaced Pat Chun, who left in January for the same job at Washington State University.
White, the school’s sixth athletic director, also will wear a vice president’s mantel. A graduate of Notre Dame, with an MBA from Ohio U., he claims strong credentials in a family with strong credentials. From 2007 to 2012 he was an account executive with IMG College, a major sports marketing operation on the college scene. He then served on the athletic staffs at Louisiana Tech, the University of Tulsa and West Point before heading to the University of Missouri, where as deputy athletic director he oversaw football and men’s basketball, broadcasting and fundraising. In one year Missouri doubled athletics fundraising to more than $50 million.
White’s father, Kevin, oversees athletics at Duke University; brother Mike is head basketball coach at the University of Florida, not far from brother Danny, who runs the athletics show at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
The new AD didn’t have to go far to make his first hire. After his fourth losing season, Michael Curry, a former NBA player, was fired March 16 as basketball coach. All White had to do was pick up the phone and call brother Mike in Gainesville. Voila! Dusty May, White’s assistant coach from 2011 to 2015 at Louisiana Tech and since 2015 at Florida, now has his first head coaching job.
Though never a college player, May has some interesting credentials. As an undergraduate, he served four years as team manager for the Indiana Hoosiers, then was on the video staffs at Southern Cal and Indiana before moving to assistant coach positions at Eastern Michigan, Murray State, Alabama-Birmingham and Louisiana Tech.
May, White said, was his “No. 1 choice … The future of the FAU men’s basketball program is bright.”
The family that plays together …
After revelations last year of multimillion-dollar payouts to women who made claims of various sexual improprieties, Fox News dumped Bill O’Reilly, who was cable news’ top-rated personality for 16 years. Since he’s no longer tied to a desk in New York, he can podcast The Spin Room from just about anywhere. Surprise, surprise, he found his way to the Palm Beaches, where he took in some fresh air and solid food at the Dune Deck at Lantana Beach.
Always on the move. … After graduating from high school in Pennsylvania, then-18-year-old Larry Rosensweig spent a year in Japan living with three families. He returned to the States to study East Asian language and culture at Michigan State and Harvard. Then he headed to Palm Beach County, where at age 25 he became the first director at the Morikami Museum. He held that position for 28 years, then spent five years as director of advancement at the Norton Museum.
More recently he has served as a consultant for arts-related organizations, raising money for the international American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science and the homegrown Spady Cultural Heritage Museum in Delray Beach.
Rosensweig’s efforts have not gone unnoticed. The Florida Association of Museums recently honored the four-decade Delray Beach resident with a lifetime achievement award for his profound impact on museums and the lives of Florida citizens. Well done.
Thom Smith is a freelance writer who can be reached at thomsmith@ymail.com.
Palm Beach Opera presented Metropolitan Opera star Sondra Radvanovsky at its annual fundraising event. Opera lovers and community leaders enjoyed an evening of music and song while supporting the enchanting art form of opera.
ABOVE: Platinum sponsor Lois Pope with David Walker.
ABOVE: Platinum sponsors Henry and Marsha Laufer.
ABOVE: Gala pianist underwriters Martin and Toni Sosnoff. Attending bronze sponsors included Meyer and Lynn Joy Sapoff and Ed and Lynn Streim, who also served as silver recital aria underwriters. Photos by Capehart
Unofficial results, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections
Unofficial results, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections
Unofficial results, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections
Unofficial results, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections
Unofficial results, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections
Unofficial results, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections
Unofficial results, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections
