BILL PARKS
WESTFIELD – Each year, the Kiwanis Club of Westfield gives more than $40,000 to the Greater Westfield Community in grants, student prizes and support of youth programs. That would not be possible, says Club President Bill Parks, without the community’s support of the club’s annual TV Auction.
The club is preparing for its 45th annual auction, which will be cablecast live on Sunday, March 2, from the Westfield State University television studio. As in the past, the program will be directed by Mark St. Jean, the university’s Coordinator of Video Production and Television Operations, with lots of volunteer assistance from Westfield State communications and computer science students.
The auction catalog this year features four tickets to a performance by pop music legend Cher at Boston’s TD Garden, complete with chauffeur-driven limousine. Other high-value items in the auction’s Super Block include a Nantucket vacation, two Hilton Head Island vacations, a week in Aruba and an overnight bus trip to Baltimore’s Camden Yard to see a Red Sox game.
Parks said area businesses have donated merchandise worth more than $60,000 which the Kiwanis Club will sell for the benefit of the community’s charities and children.
Parks said the auction will air from noon to 8 p.m. Sunday and will be carried live in Westfield and Southwick on Comcast’s community access channel 15. The program will also be streamed live on the Internet at www.westfield.ma.edu/Kiwanis. In addition to the Super Block, the auction also features two “big blocks” with items of only slightly lesser value, including tickets for a Red Sox-Yankees game, Celtics luxury-seat tickets, rounds of golf, private parties at local restaurants and more.
The annual Kiwanis auction began on local AM radio in Westfield in 1969. It moved to a televised format more than 20 years ago, when the Westfield cable community access channel became available. Students and faculty from Westfield State University’s communications department provide technical and studio support. Many of the Kiwanis Club’s 75 members and a host of volunteers will work in the studio and answer phones on auction day. Bids are recorded in a computer database designed and built for the Kiwanis Club by students from the Westfield State computer science department as a class project. The computer system allows recording of bids in real time, eliminating the potential for errors that existed in the paper-based system formerly used by the club.
Guest auctioneers are expected to include many Westfield-area elected officials and local celebrities as well as representatives of many of the community service agencies which benefit from the funds raised.
On Tuesday, March 4, volunteers will staff the club’s redemption center at the St. Joseph’s National Catholic Church hall, where bidders will pay and pick up their winnings from 5 to 8 p.m.Cash, personal checks and major credit cards will be accepted.
The auction supports many community projects and organizations, including the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Westfield, which was founded in 1969 by the Westfield Kiwanis Club; Westfield’s Little League baseball and softball program, also founded by Westfield Kiwanis; and youth hockey and soccer programs. The Westfield Chapter of the Red Cross, the Westfield Athenaeum Boys and Girls Library, and Kiwanis “Good Citizen” awards to high school students in Westfield and Southwick also benefit from the auction. Potential bidders can apply in advance for an auction speed bid number by emailing [email protected] and please nclude name, address and telephone number.
