If you were at our 6th Annual Ben­e­fit, take a look at the attached. The pic­tures taken by the offi­cial Hour Detroit Mag­a­zine pho­tog­ra­pher are now up on the Hour Detroit Mag­a­zine web­site! Thanks to all at Hour Detroit for their sup­port of Charlotte’s Wings!

http://www.hourdetroit.com/Hour-Detroit/May-2013/Charlottes-Wings-Benefit-2013/

600 peo­ple gath­ered Fri­day night at the Royal Park Hotel in Rochester for Charlotte’s Wings’ 6^th Annual Benefit.

Joanne Tar­ling (left) and Jen­nifer Buck (right), Charlotte’s Wings Founders, at the 6th Annual Ben­e­fit, Fri­day May 17th 2013 at the Royal Park Hotel in Rochester.

The event fea­tured an amaz­ing array of silent auc­tion prizes – every­thing from trips to the Caribbean to an evening in ‘Home Plate Suite’ at Com­er­ica Park, lunch with Neal Rubin of the Detroit News or a Limo-chaffeured pub crawl through down­town Rochester. Guests also enjoyed the Royal Park Hotel’s deli­cious din­ner menu, had their pic­tures taken in the event photo booth cour­tesy of The Flash­Booth and danced the night away to local band, LoveSick. An espe­cially pop­u­lar choice at the bar was the Charlotte’s Wings sig­na­ture cock­tail, the ‘Booka­tini’, which returned for its third year at the event. Local media per­son­al­i­ties Jamie Samuelsen and Christy McDon­ald per­formed as Mas­ter and Mis­tress of Cer­e­monies for the evening.

This is the 6th Annual Ben­e­fit for Charlotte’s Wings and the fourth to be held at the Royal Park Hotel. The non-profit was founded in March of 2008, in mem­ory of a local infant girl, Char­lotte, who died at just 5 months old of a rare degen­er­a­tive brain dis­ease. In lieu of bap­tism gifts, her par­ents made a large dona­tion of books to the pedi­atric unit at Beau­mont Hos­pi­tal, Royal Oak, MI. Charlotte’s Wings was founded to con­tinue and expand this ini­tia­tive – donat­ing books to chil­dren in hos­pi­tal and hos­pice care across the whole of Michi­gan. To date they have donated over 22,000 to pedi­atric units in hos­pi­tals and hos­pices and founded 4 pedi­atric ref­er­ence libraries across the state.

The 6^th Annual Ben­e­fit on Sat­ur­day night raised $58,000 to fur­ther their mis­sion – a hugely suc­cess­ful result for the Charlotte’s Wings team. Says Jen­nifer Buck, Charlotte’s Wings founder and chair, “The ongo­ing gen­eros­ity of our sup­port­ers will allow us to con­tinue to expand the scope and quan­tity of the projects that we are able to take on. We are so grate­ful for the gen­eros­ity of our sup­port­ers and so excited to think of all of the young lives through­out Michi­gan that we are able to pos­i­tively impact as a result”.

To find out more about Charlotte’s Wings and the work they do go to www.charlottes-wings.com or look them up on Facebook.

For any­one who wasn’t at our 6th Annual Ben­e­fit on May 17th — or even if you were and want to see it again — here’s the video made for that event by Angela of Jump­ing With My Fin­gers Crossed. It’s a won­der­ful expres­sion of why we do what we do and why our suc­cess on May 17th was so impor­tant. Take a look.

Char­lottes Wings 2013 from Jump­ing With My Fin­gers Crossed on Vimeo.

Dear Sup­port­ers,

We are delighted to announce that our 6th Annual Ben­e­fit on Fri­day, May 17th, at the Royal Park Hotel in Rochester, is entirely sold out.

We are absolutely blown away by the speed at which we have sold over 500 tick­ets to the event. The extent to which our won­der­ful com­mu­nity has embraced and cham­pi­oned this cause con­tin­ues to amaze us. We feel so blessed to be part of this great orga­ni­za­tion and part of a com­mu­nity that is so proac­tive in sup­port­ing every­thing we are doing.

We are sorry that the only down­side of our unex­pect­edly swift sell-out means that we are unable to accom­mo­date some of our sup­port­ers who would have liked to attend this year. We are hope­ful that you will con­tinue to watch our progress through 2013 and that you will be able to join us on May 2nd, 2014, for our 7th Annual Ben­e­fit. Mark those cal­en­dars now!

We rec­og­nize that some of your replies were mailed before this announce­ment. Please be assured that we will con­tact you either way — either to con­firm your atten­dance or to let you know that unfor­tu­nately we were already sold out at that time. We are so appre­cia­tive for your patience and under­stand­ing while we take the time to notify everyone.

Again, thank you to every­one who made this sell out sit­u­a­tion pos­si­ble — it’s an incred­i­ble and mov­ing vote in acknowl­edge­ment of all we are doing and we are so grate­ful for your support.

With Grat­i­tude,

Charlotte’s Wings

Thank you to the won­der­ful com­mu­nity at Yacks Ele­men­tary in Har­ri­son Town­ship — we picked up a fab­u­lous dona­tion from them today! Thank you so much to every­one at the school — we will put these great books to excel­lent use! Thank you!!!

Yacks Ele­men­tary stu­dents and the books they are donat­ing to CW!

We love this pic­ture of sweet Cecylia, who we met at Beau­mont Hos­pi­tal, Royal Oak yes­ter­day. Here she is enjoy­ing some of the books donated to the hos­pi­tal by Charlotte’s Wings. We hope you get bet­ter really, really soon, Cecylia! And we hope that our books bring you a lit­tle com­fort dur­ing your stay in the hospital.

Owen, age 5

More CW news today…Marquette Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal sent us this pic­ture of their children’s grief camp from last August. As part of this camp they used grief activ­ity books donated by CW. We hope the camp made a big dif­fer­ence to these brave chil­dren and are proud that we played our part to help.

Mar­quette Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal Children’s Grief Camp

Dear Sup­port­ers,

Charlotte’s Wings is excited to announce that our 6th Annual Ben­e­fit will be held on Fri­day, May 17, 2013, at the Royal Park Hotel in Rochester, Michi­gan. Like past years, there will be cock­tails, a sit-down din­ner, and hun­dreds of excit­ing silent auc­tion items. We are excited to announce that pop­u­lar local band LoveSick will be pro­vid­ing live enter­tain­ment fol­low­ing the din­ner pro­gram. Also, we are grate­ful that Christy McDon­ald and Jamie Samuelsen have agreed to serve as our emcees again.

We look for­ward to shar­ing this won­der­ful evening with you and are count­ing on your con­tin­ued sup­port for our mis­sion of com­fort­ing chil­dren in hos­pi­tals and hos­pice care across Michigan.

Please save this date. We will be send­ing infor­ma­tion regard­ing ticket sales very soon.

For all of the lat­est news on Charlotte’s Wings, includ­ing recent book dona­tions and infor­ma­tion regard­ing our upcom­ing Annual Ben­e­fit, “LIKE” us on Face­book or check out our web­site at www.charlottes-wings.com.

Warm regards,

Charlotte’s Wings