Mattie Parker, Karl Rove, Gary Patterson help raise near-record $460K for Goodfellows
A downtown business club’s annual charity luncheon turned into a Christmas miracle Wednesday for 10,000 Tarrant County children.
In a year when an uncertain economy has slowed holiday donations in an unsettled America, members of the Exchange Club of Fort Worth opened their hearts and wallets.
In 90 minutes, they gave an unexpected $460,000, nearly a record, toward new clothing for children through the Star-Telegram Goodfellow Fund.
Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker made a surprise guest appearance and efficiently applied extra pressure. She leveraged an extra $210,000 in a second round of checks and pledges.
The 120 members of the men’s civic club had originally donated $250,000, a generous gift but short of recent years and well short of needs for the 111-year-old Christmas charity.
The outpouring of added gifts is “the Fort Worth spirit,” Parker said after circling twice through the Fort Worth Club meeting room collecting gifts that averaged nearly $4,000 per person and came in at a rate of more than $5,000 per minute.
Guest speaker Karl Rove, the Republican political consultant, made a donation, as did Fort Worth philanthropist Gary Patterson, the former TCU football coach.
“Fort Worth lifted me up, and we’re always going to do our best to uplift Fort Worth,” said Patterson, now a University of Texas Longhorns special assistant.
Rove, an Austin resident who engineered George W. Bush’s rise to power, spoke at length on America’s embattled political past.
(Sample: “You think politics is screwed up today? Go back to the Gilded Age.”)
He also praised Parker and said America needs to move past the baby boomer era of leadership from the White House down. Yes, as in President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
But his most important comment came when he said he would donate a visit to his South Texas ranch for Goodfellows.
Fort Worth investor John Goff, interviewing Rove, won the bid at $20,000.
Along with a $25,000 gift from late Star-Telegram co-founder’s Amon G. Carter Foundation, that helped push the day’s total closer to the 2021 record of $500,000, with some gifts yet to be counted.
Last year’s total included a special added gift to honor Patterson for his six Top-10 finishes and 11 10-win seasons at TCU. He also recruited star quarterback Max Duggan and many of the Horned Frogs players on current Coach Sonny Dykes’ No. 3-ranked national playoff team.
Before the luncheon, current club president George Young Jr. — who traditionally begs or browbeats members for bigger donations as the meeting’s “Chief Extractor” — said he just hoped members could donate $300,000, the record before 2021.
Every $50 provides a gift card to Old Navy stores for a needy child’s school clothes.
On Parker’s first pass through the room, Young found a surprise: Some club member had dropped a valet parking ticket into the donations.
“I’m going to go claim this car,” he said.
“If this is your car, please notify us so we can estimate the value of your donation.”
(It was a gag.)
Before the meeting, past club President Jim Anthony said he wasn’t sure how giving would go.
“It’s an uncertain year in the economy, and there are a lot of unknowns out there,” he said.
Now in its 86th year since the first charity party in 1936 — missing only the first pandemic year in 2020 — the event is the club’s highlight, he said.
“This is a fun day, and it’s fun for all of us just to be a part of it,” he said.
“All this is just so important. If it wasn’t for what we do here for children, there almost wouldn’t be any reason to be here.”
The Exchange Club found 10,000 reasons.
About Goodfellows
The Goodfellows began as an offshoot of the first newspaper charity drive in the United States, founded by the Chicago Tribune on Dec. 10, 1909. A Chicago city attorney wrote a letter challenging his friends to donate the money they would have spent on holiday partying to charity.
In 1911, the Advertising Club of Fort Worth staged the first local Goodfellows campaign. On the day after Thanksgiving in 1912, Publisher Amon G. Carter brought the tradition to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
To find out more, visit goodfellowfundfw.com. The new post office box for donations and correspondence is P.O. Box 149, Fort Worth, TX 76101.
