Submitted by: Ferndale Chamber of Commerce
To think it all started with one small request. May 12 and 13, 2017 was the 9th Annual Chelsey Rae Ebert Celebrity Weekend Event, and no different than the past few years, it proved to be memorable, fun and full of celebrities and guests.
Friday night’s dinner and auction, held at the Silver Reef Event Center, was beautifully displayed in a hint “Chelsey pink.” With over 300 guests and celebrities, from Mark Lee of Green Bay who is headed to the Green Bay Hall of Fame in July and a five times guest of the event, to Luke Willson of the Seattle Seahawks for his second appearance, the guests could mingle with over a dozen different professional sports members, getting pictures and autographs. The auction was filled with baskets and items donated from all over Whatcom County with items like custom wine barrel dog beds to an All-Signed Seattle Seahawk Super Bowl Football.
Phillip66 was the Title Sponsor of the event and the Silver Reef was the Hospitality Sponsor. There was a dessert dash that was filled with delectable pies, cakes and even doughnuts from local bakeries where guests donated monies by table and then, starting with the highest bidder, sent their table runners in a “dash” for the best desserts. The competition becomes quite deep, with people sprinting from across the room to beat the next table for their targeted p(r)ies!
Day two was spent at Shuksan Golf Club for a shot-gun start tournament. Ancon was the Tournament Title Sponsor and placed among the top three teams. There were character drawings, sponsors with fun games along the course and a drone for pictures to capture the fun shots as guests golfed along with the celebrities. The day started out with some rain but, as usual, Chelsey helped part the clouds (or so we’d like to think) and it finished with beautiful sunny weather for the awards on “The 7th Hole.”
In all, the event raised over $210,000 to run the two-day event and will give back to the scholarships, Make-A-Wish, St. Joseph’s Hospital and the Ferndale Chamber of Commerce, who ran the entire event. If all the in-kind and other donations are taken into consideration, the number is much higher. Any monies left over will be saved for next year’s scholarships.
When people pass away, we are often willing to say our goodbye’s and move on but when Chelsey Ebert was sick with cancer, she wanted to leave a legacy; two Ferndale girl sports scholarships. She didn’t think it was a legacy, she just thought it was a good idea. Now, because goodbye wasn’t enough, ten years later, she has touched so many lives with her one small request as the event has raised over $1,000,000 and given out almost 100 scholarships and donated to numerous organizations in her name. If we all took the time to stop and consider what we want to leave behind as our legacy, then started now, imagine the lives we could touch.
