Music In The Mancave

By KIRK BOXLEITNER
Arlington Times Reporter
March 6, 2013

ARLINGTON — Lee Harman’s hangar at the Arlington Municipal Airport once again played host to “Music in the ManCave” on March 2, as Harman and his fellow Arlington Rotarian Ron Love served as the emcees for an evening of fundraising for the Rotary Foundation’s PolioPlus Program, with roughly 100 attendees, and musical accompaniment provided by Mike Zachman and the Jennifer Scott Trio.

Love estimated that this third “Music in the ManCave” event raised more than $25,000, although he acknowledged that the number of matching grants at work makes it difficult for him to nail down a number just yet.

“Rotary District 5050 stretches from Everett all the way up into Canada, and we had Rotary Clubs from Seattle to Canada represented,” Love said. “In Canada and the United States, all those dollars donated are being matched by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and in Canada alone, the Canadian government is also matching every dollar, so we’re getting $2 for every dollar donated from the U.S. and $3 from every dollar donated from Canada. Not only have we not finished counting the pledges that we got that night, but we’ve still got pledges coming in.”

The first “Music in the ManCave” event in November of 2011 raised at least $27,000 for Rotary’s PolioPlus, and Love believes that this event will likely equal or exceed that number, in spite of the number of scheduled attendees who cancelled to attend the Arlington girls basketball team’s Hardwood Classic game in Tacoma that weekend.

“We were expecting as many at 120 guests, but with the girls’ championship game on Saturday, they went to Tacoma instead,” Love said. “We still got lots of pledges, including one donor who gave us $1,000, $500 of which was matched by Boeing even before the Gates Foundation matched that total amount. Lee [Harman] and I put this all on ourselves. We pay for the bands, and we own the tables and chairs, so all we ask is for people to participate. We don’t just want it to be a party of Lee and me,” he laughed.