Denham Springs Drive Results + Chili’s Fundraiser + Other Donations

On Saturday we had our first GabeStrong bone marrow drive, in Denham Springs at North Park.  I’m happy to say that it was a great success, with 71 potential donors added to the national marrow donor registry!  Jennie and Gabe visited with us for a while (he looked great, btw!).  Gabe filmed a short interview with WBRZ which aired on Saturday evening.  We’re hoping to get a copy of the clip to link to here!

We really enjoyed getting to visit with the folks who stopped by, including Trevor Vampren from Team Trevor and his mom, Pam, who joined the marrow registry on Saturday, and WBRZ reporter Rob Krieger and his intern, who both also swabbed and signed up on Saturday!  Our volunteers did an outstanding job with their stations — not an easy task because we stayed busy most of the day.  Thanks for a job well done to all our crew, to Chad Carlton for the loan of the huge canopy (a life-saver!), and to Joel and Tanya Leblanc for delivering it and helping to set it up, and for loaning us tables, too!

Natalie from Be The Match reports that we collected $838.00 in donations at the drive on Saturday (in addition to sales of GabeStrong tees and bracelets)!  That will process another 16+ new bone marrow registry signup mouth swab kits at LSU!  $500 of that was a generous donation from Dr. David J. Wyatt, M.D., Orthopaedic Surgeon with the Zachary Orthopaedic Care Center (“World-class care just around the corner” — give him a call to schedule an appointment at (225) 658-9996)!

We’d also like to thank Missy and her awesome crew at the Denham Springs Chili’s!  Our Giveback Day Monday brought in $200 to Be the Match to help fund our LSU drive!  Thanks also to everyone who came out to enjoy great food, great service, and great prices on Monday night!  Please keep Chili’s in mind any day you’re making plans to eat out for lunch or dinner — they support many local causes and are huge national supporters of St. Jude!

Last of all but certainly not least:  we received a $250 donation today from the Denham Springs Rotary Club – thanks go out to these awesome folks and to Darlene Shingleur for suggesting our cause to her organization!

Continue reading for more pics from Saturday!