Skål Boston 2020 Holiday Party
Skålleagues we are grateful to have had the opportunity to toast together on December 17, 2020. It has certainly been an unexpected year, but the fellowship of this group has been a light.
Our President, Beth Stehley, welcomed us all to the event and acted as event emcee taking us through a terrific program.
Everyone who pre-registered for the meeting was surprised by the Skål elves with a holiday surprise to make your toast a little sweeter.
We toasted with outgoing Skål USA President Dave Ryan, who’s been a regular with us this year, and with incoming President Jim Dwyer.
Carrie Campbell announced our 2020 charity and David Colella introduced us to David O’Leary, longtime radio host in the morning at Magic 106.7, voice talent and chair of the board for the Boston chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The charity was selected this year as we lost one of our hospitality family members to suicide this month, Walter Janulewicz. Amy Finnsilver shared more with us about Walter’s life and helped us all to feel like we knew him too. In Walter’s memory, the board matched the first $3,000 donated. As of the posting of this blog we have raised $6,835 toward our $9,000 goal. If you have donated, we thank you. If you haven’t yet had the opportunity, and you have the means to do so, we ask that you please click here to learn more about Walter, the AFSP, and to give your support.
To help everyone look back on 2020, board member Efren Aponte, from the Moxy Boston, and Cara Pratt from CSI DMC created a terrific video for us to all enjoy. It was really enjoyable to watch!
Mr. Snowman sang us a song…
David brought us through some amazing raffle prizes! Thank you to the Intercontinental Hotel Boston, Moxy Boston, Boston Park Plaza, Colonnade Boston and the New England Aquarium for your donations!
To close it out, David took us for a trip around town with some of our favorites. I strongly recommend you take a watch:
We closed our meeting out with Boston Fireworks from the Fairmont over Copley Square and wish everyone a safe and healthy end to 2020 and that you have a wonderful and prosperous 2021.
Skål!
The full meeting can be viewed here on our YouTube channel.
