Lots going on with 18 FORE Life. Hope you can find the time to check out this video! We hope to see you on the weekend of June 6-7 as we celebrate 25 years of helping raise money for those fighting cancer.

Sincerely, Scott Kruse

Transcript:
Hey, everybody, it’s Scott with 18 for life. Having it’s been a little bit. And I want to get you get you a little video out, letting you know how much we got going on. I’m going to try to be real brief here, but I got a lot of stuff. I want to start by sharing with you, something we got in the mail from the Wayne Rush family. They sent a program from his. From his funeral. They sent a note, and they sent $1,000. And the note said this. Said Wayne was a recipient of an 18 for life gift back in 2015 while battling prostate cancer. He was so grateful and always wanted to be able to pay it forward to someone else in need. Wayne gained his heavenly reward is past December and we are proud to honor his wish of helping another family. Thank you. The Wayne Rush family. 25 years ago, I put every one of those in a shoe box and, took a little bit to fill up the shoe box, and things started kind of flowing over after a year or two or whenever. And we moved into plastic tubs. And now we’ve got the biggest plastic tub you can find. And, and it’s, it’s, it’s well over three fourths of the way full. And we keep every one of those. They mean a lot to us. It kind of inspires us, I feel to keep keep doing, keep helping, keep helping these folks fight this fight. And, so that’s kind of cool. And I like sharing those with you from time to time. Well, what all we got happening, we got our plans and our organizing going on for June 6th and seven, and it’s the Ben Cruz 18 for live charity golf event. It’s our 25th anniversary celebration. We want it to be special. It’s proven to be special. And we want you there. Tickets for the banquet on the six are $40. You can contact me. I’ll reserve your ticket. I’ll get you the hard copy or. Or I’ll send it to your phone. Those are the two ways to get in the door. But your, your $40 will get you a heck of a meal from the Elks. And then I’m fixing to tell you about the lineup that we are super excited about. But make plans. Make plans to be there. Mike Matheny, former catcher, former manager of the Saint Louis Cardinals, is our keynote. He’s just. You can tell he’s just an amazing, solid human being. And, he he’s friends with John Mayberry. If you saw John Mayberry years ago, I believe this maybe 2009, something like that. Maybe he said, oh, you need to do that. They’re crowds. Great. They’re people are great. What they do is great. He just really talked us up. And the thing he was quick to just say, I would love to be there and all that. So he’s just, he just seems like a great man. And I think you are going to love him. His assistant Christy said, I’m biased. She said he’s like a brother to me, but anytime he’s near, I go hear him speak because she said, I get a different message. I get something powerful from him every time he speaks. And, so I can’t wait. He’s got two books out if you want to look into some of his messages, they’re very positive. They’re very cool. And, hey, he’s Mike Matheny. It’s going to be great. Right before him, Amy Warfield Delay will give the love offering recipient testimony. She’s got one. She’s just an amazing woman. I talked to her daughter Chelsea several times throughout her Amy’s battle. And Chelsea would always say, my mom’s so strong. She’s so tough. And if you if you’re if you’re from Dexter and if you grew up around me, you’re you’re around the same age as Amy Moorfield. And, you know, the Moorfield family, they’re very faithful. They’re very strong. They’re very tough. All of those things, they’re just great people. And, Amy’s Amy’s story is going to be wonderful, and I can’t wait to hear it. I’m looking forward to it. And, her brother Chris, if you came to the very first banquet that we, started the, you know, the year after my brother, got killed, if you if you came to that, you heard Chris Mow field and Norm Stewart, and you heard them establish that feeling in the room that we feel every June, it’s like, that’s the feeling. It was there when Chris spoke. It’ll be there when Amy speaks. And, it’s just special. It’s just special. It’s just a different feeling. I told Mike Matheny. I said, it’s a little bit of a wedding reception. It’s a little bit of church. It’s a little bit of a class reunion. It’s just a lot of fun and it’s just great people. I said, the people, you’re just going to love them. They’re just beautiful, beautiful people. So get you a ticket? Again, I got those $40. Just let me know. I’ll get them to you before. Before the day. Coach Jim Hall is going to give the toast to my brother. If you’re from this area, you know that Coach Hall is a legendary basketball coach. My brother and I were. We’re lucky enough to play for him. He he had a big impact on on our lives. And I can’t wait to hear him tell some stories and give a toast to my brother. It’ll be special. And it’s just fitting that he’s part of this 25th anniversary celebration, so we can’t wait. My buddy David Robinson’s work, and to put together a video that that kind of sums up and, and captures 25 years worth of memories and and also the spirit of this charity. And, that’s not an easy task. But if you’ve seen his work before, you know, he always comes through. If you have any photos or any archived, you know, cool items, send them to me, send pictures to me so I can get them to him, let them add to the video and add to his work. That’d be really cool. I would I would appreciate that he would do. So, we’re looking for more sponsors. I don’t really go around beating down the doors, with our sponsors. They’re just so gracious. And, you know, they just they they’re quick to get back to me. We we’re always looking for more sponsors, but for our gift bag items, we’ve got some really nice items. We’re looking for one more sponsor to go on a sleeve of an item. And I would love it to be your business. If you’re able to talk to me, contact me. I would love that. We’ve had Mathis funeral Homes step up the Guild group, step up the Bank of advent, step up. And and, they’ve always been there to allow us to give nice gifts to our, our golfers. And so that’s, that’s that’s really, really a cool thing. Mercy Stoddard is sponsoring the banquet. We’ve got a great relationship with mercy. They’re very, supportive. They gave away a free t shirt in the very first year at the first golf tournament, and they’ve never stopped doing that. We’ve added items, but they’ve remained. And now they’ve also, over the past several years, they’ve wanted to sponsor the banquet. They bring a great group of people to add to our crowd. They’re great people. They’re, they’re they’re very supportive. And your ticket money can go straight to where it needs to go because they’re going to pay for the banquet, they’re going to pay for that meal and all of that. So that’s that’s special. And and we really we want to thank all those folks. There’s a ton of ways to sponsor. And we appreciate every bit of we got families, businesses, small business, big business. We appreciate it all. It all adds up to the work that we get to do together and, collectively and, and, and just think about this. No matter how you support eight teams for life, it all goes to the same people that are fighting the the fight we’ve given away. It’s a 3 million, it we’re $17,000 short of $4 million. So I can’t wait to see us hit that as we lead into this event. It’s just another thing that we we will celebrate. It’s another reason that we all do this. And again, we thank everybody. We thank all you all for supporting and helping us out and helping us get there. There’s a number of ways to sponsor, though. Holler at me if you if you’ve got any ideas or if you if you think you could sponsor, just yell at me and there will be a cool way I promise to add to the event. And and so last but not least, we are going to give away a classic car. I yeah, we’ve given away a lot of golf carts. Another kind of crazy thought a long time ago was we might want to give away a car maybe one day, and then that kind of faded. Well, then a classmate of my dad’s named Mike Gibson. His name’s Mike. You might know him as Mike. Honey Gibson. Very successful man. He contacted that and said, I got a car and I don’t drive it anymore. Do you think the charity would be able to use that? That said, I’m sure they could. And then you lay your eyes on this 1967 convertible GTO red white top, beautiful interior. Sherm Smith appraised it a lot of money. It’s valued at a lot of money. He said whoever wins this thing is going to walk away, get in a car. They can feel good about driving it anywhere they want to go. It’s a solid, well put together, great automobile. And Sherm knows, so we figured out that we want to sell $1,100 tickets, and then we’ll we’ll put them in a tumbler and we’ll spend them, we’ll video it, we’ll draw it, and someone will win an automobile. A classic car, a beautiful car. That car sitting in Allen Christian showroom right now. If you want to drive by, I’ll post a bunch of pictures on Facebook and hopefully you’ll share those. Like I said, $100 will sell a thousand of them if we haven’t sold them. By the time the banquet gets here, we will sell them at the banquet. If we haven’t sold them after that night, we’ll sell them at the golf tournament. And once the thousand, the thousand tickets are gone, we’ll we’ll do the video and we’ll give that away, and we’ll call someone and give them the title to a 1967 GTO. Can’t believe I’m saying that really is just such a cool thing. Again, drive by Allen Christian. Check out the photos. But the car is a great, great, great piece of machinery. So that’s what we’re going to do. I mentioned that we’re going to pass $4 million. Courts Against Cancer. The tennis team here at Dexter, they just gave us a donation. They’re having a match. And and they raised money. Last night I went to middle schools. Hits for Hope volleyball game. The game itself got kind of stormed out a couple weeks ago. The storms hit. They had to cancel. So they did an end of the year scrimmage where the girls played the baseball guys and volleyball and the the they came up with something. I think that’s going to be new for Dexter Middle School at least. It was very fun, very exciting. All the parents had a great time. The kids had a great time. The student, it looked like a real event. The student section was all pinked out and and again, I’m just real proud of that fundraiser. So that was recent that the tennis team hits for Hope, the Larry and Kathy Hope campaign. They just had their huge fish fry. Quite honestly, they’re fixing to send the donation and that will get us over 4 million. I think that’s very fitting. They’ve given away or given away. They’ve sent right at $200,000 to 18 for life. They decided they wanted to partner with us. They are a huge fundraiser. They send us the money and then they send us names and addresses and we get that money, you know, to, to people and, and, it’s just been a great partnership. Laura Gordy and her team up there, Bloomfield the fish fry is amazing. Their team, they’re the their team works just amazing. It’s great. And those are just some examples we’ve got other fundraisers to recognize at the, at the banquet and, I’m sure I’ll go over that when I recap it. Again. I thank you for sticking with me on this video. It’s a lot. I’m sure some people checked out, but, I hope that you stuck around and I hope that you will see us June 6th and seventh. We’re going to have a great time. It’s going to be a great way to celebrate. We’ve got a lot to remember and again, by supporting A-Team for life, you do the giving. And, and again, we all get to help families and, it’s it’s it’s been 25 years worth of really good stuff. You know, we started this thing, didn’t know what we were doing, and, and, it it is really it is really grown into something special and something that can make an impact. And honestly, I, I see one day that maybe we don’t do this because there’s going to be a cure. You got to think, after 25 years, you’ve got to think within the next 25 years, we won’t be having this event. Well, well, maybe we’ll have the celebration, maybe we’ll have the party, but we won’t have to worry about the fundraising and, that’s that’s our hope. That’s our hope. But until they tell us there’s a cure, we really only know to keep doing this. So thanks for being on the team. You guys have a happy Easter. We hope to see you in June. And again, always. As always, thanks for supporting 18 for life.