United Way celebrates

A bunch of us from the office attended the great “reveal” for the Tulsa Area United Way last night, and oh, what a night! It was in the new Lorton Hall at TU, which is beautiful. TAUW director Mark Graham pointed out that the artwork lining the halls was done by TU students and mentioned a print by Picasso in the same sentence. Campaign chair Jim Bender from Williams didn’t let him get away with that. “Every day I learn something new about Tulsa, and tonight I learned that Pablo Picasso graduated from TU. He’s a good painter too,” Jim said. We were all laughing and revved up as we waited to see how Mark would do the reveal. Picture a pregnant woman in a white t-shirt with a giant dollar sign. She came up on stage followed by eight people, young and old, with numbers on their t-shirts. As it turned out, each person had been helped in some way by a United Way agency. Then Mark brought his 85-year-old mother on stage and told how she and his father had been helped by three United Way agencies. He said that everyone on stage “looked like you and me, because they are you and me.” It was the perfect thing to say.

Every day I work for the Salvation Army I think, ‘but for the grace of God, there go I.’ Mark wore the number four and a young man to his left wore a two. The 24 million dollar goal was reached and thousands of people will be helped in 2012. Thank you to everyone who worked on the campaign and the United Way.
 
-Sallie