Retired Methodist Hospital CEO Dennis Lee and his wife Carolyn are still raising money for his former employer, this time as the honoree at the 23rd annual Crystal Ball fundraiser at Pasadena Civic Center Saturday night (Oct. 13).
Dennis Lee thanks his wife for bid to keep his hair long.
Lee after his $1,750 haircut for charity
In addition to the approximately half-million dollars raised at the event each year — $470 million this year; $104,000 donated by guests at the event that evening — Lee, in his late 60s, showed up sporting 1960s-era long hair and offered to cut his locks for money during the evening. After his wife bid $1,500 for him to keep it long, a $1,750 bid prompted a trip to a makeshift barber’s chair near the men’s room. He later returned to the stage showing off his new haircut.
Natalie Cole
Crowded dance floor as Natalie Cole sings the songs of her father Nat, pictured at left.
The featured entertainment at the conclusion of the five-hour program was singer Natalie Cole, who performed for more than an hour, including her version of her father Nat King Cole’s famous “Unforgettable” that drew more than a third of the audience to the dance floor for the first time about 30-minutes into the performance.
After a set featuring mostly jazz and songs from the 1940s and 50s like “Get Your Kicks on Route 66,” Cole wrapped with a surprising shift to two far more energetic rock songs, kicked off with a surprising version by Cole of the Neil Young tune, “Old Man,” which she covered with great passion and exhuberance.
Money is raised from about 800 attendees each year for tables of ten sold for as much as tens of thousands of dollars each, individual tickets sold for at least $400, silent auction items being sold for hundreds and thousands of dollars each, and a live auction that draws winning bids of thousands of dollars for every item.
After 3 1/2-hours of these activities, a delicious dinner, wine, and dessert, and presentations to the honorees, by co-chairs John Wuo and Peggy Tsiang Cherng, and about the hospital, this year focusing on the services for patients of strokes, Cole quietly walked on to the stage without any introduction as people were standing and talking. She began singing softly with no fanfare and soon the room began to quiet down and people took their seats as her vocals grew stronger and the audience was soon enraptured.
— By Scott Hettrick