On Monday August 14th the clouds shielded the strength of the sun on the participants, but did nothing to cloud the events of the day!
The 10th Annual Golf Outing, which was started by Joe Rumore, and now co-chaired by he and Louis Romano Jr., had the largest field of players thus far. The 102 golfers, many who have been with Joe and the annual outing since its inception, played the beautiful Arcola Country Club in Paramus, New Jersey. The coarse was in pristine shape and offered many views of the New York City skyline. The golfers included those who survived myocarditis, families of those that were not able to beat the disease, and many others who support the Foundation looking for a cure.
The day started with lunch on the terrace before the 1:00 pm shotgun start. While driving about the course I could see the enjoyment on the golfers faces as they wagered among themselves, savored the cigars, compliments of Lou Romano, Jr., and posed for pictures of their foursomes.
Cocktail hour on the terrace allowed the teams to catch up with each other on the events of the day. The comradery of the golfers was evident through the stories and laughs that they shared. During dinner, Dr. Katelyn Bruno, a post-doctoral researcher at the Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville Florida, was the guest speaker. She updated the group about the research being done and the papers being written on it. You could hear the excitement in her voice when she spoke of the positive outcomes being noted in the fight against this disease.
Joe Rumore thanked everyone and shared the growth of the Myocarditis Foundation (MF) with the players and what their ongoing donations have meant to the success of the MF through the years. The golf outing has been the major source of revenue for the MF to award an Annual Fellowship Research Grant to Post-Doctoral Myocarditis Researchers over the years. The golf item raffle prizes, donated by the Pro Shop at Arcola as well as through Golf Galaxy by the MF, brought the players to scan their ticket holdings for the winning tickets. There was an auction for tickets to both the Mets as well as the Yankees, that were donated to the MF specifically for the day. The key prize that everyone wanted to be the winner of was the “Bermuda 2018 at The Reefs Resort” that was donated by Candace Moose. The money obtained from this raffle has always been earmarked specifically for our annual Fellowship Research Grant. The winner was someone that has supported the MF’s Golf Outing since it’s inception and who is looking forward to visiting the beautiful island of Bermuda next spring.
Throughout the day, the attendees had access to information on the MF and the ability to read the “Not a Blank Canvas” stories of myocarditis survivors and victims that were on display for them to read.
The success of the outing proved to be the best thus far. Thank you to Lou and Joe for all your hard work on putting this together. We thank Sam Raia, the sponsoring member at Arcola, as well as Jason Hooper and his staff who helped make the day a very pleasant one for all involved. Thank you most of all to Mother Nature, who once again came through with a beautiful day for golf!
