(Atlantic) The first annual Celebrity Waiter Dinner to benefit Faith’s Friends raised over $20,000.
Christina Bateman and her husband established Faith’s Friends in March of 2017 in memory of their oldest daughter Faith who passed away.
“She lived for an hour and a half after she was born and then she passed away in my arms. She had a genetic condition that didn’t allow her to form any air sacks and so she couldn’t breathe once she was born and that’s why she passed away,” said Bateman. “After we started Faith’s Friends we also lost our identical twin daughters about 6 months later in October of 2017, so we operate it in memory of Belle and Reese as well.”
The mission of Faith’s Friends is to relieve financial burdens during times of infant and child loss by helping pay for funeral, burial and headstone costs of infants and children who pass away. Bateman said they help families that live in Iowa and Nebraska.
“At this point and time, all but one family that we have helped has lived in either southwest Iowa or west central Iowa. Our primary focus is to help families of infants and younger children, but we do and have helped families whose children were up to age 18 years old,” explained Bateman. “What we do then is we contact the funeral homes and they get us an invoice and then we pay the funeral homes, monument companies and cemeteries directly.”
The Celebrity Waiter Dinner was held Saturday, March 7th at the Atlantic Golf and Country Club.
“Basically how that event works, for people are from the Atlantic area they probably remember it from the past, the Atlantic Junior Federated Women used to put on this event from about 1985 to about 2000. Basically what happens is we find waiters and then they find their table guests and invite them. The waiters pick a theme and they dress up in that theme and they try to get tips from their guests for everything. They can also take their theme and use that to try to get tips, so if you have a Hawaiian theme you could buy leis and try to sell leis to everyone that is there for a couple of dollars or something like that to help raise tips,” said Bateman.
Bateman said they had about 240 people attend as guests; there were 36 waiters; Police Chief Dave Erickson appeared as Sheriff Woody; and there were several other individuals that helped out in other ways. Bateman would like to thank everyone who helped out with the event.
“These waiters put in tons of their time and their money to make this event a great success, so I’m extremely thankful for them and also to the community as a whole. Ever since we started the organization we’ve just had great support from our amazing community and we’re just incredibly thankful for each and every one of you and your support of our organization and these families who have lost their children,” stated Bateman.
Bateman said between the silent auction and tips they brought in just over $24,000. She said after all the expenses are paid they should net around $22,000 for Faith’s Friends.
