Festival of Trees raises nearly $35,000

Walter Sprague
Art and Culture Reporter
 
This year’s recipients of the proceeds from Pinnacle Bank’s 17th annual Festival of Trees are In-Home Services and Newcastle Volunteer Fire Department.
Held on Friday, Dec. 6, at the Weston County Senior Center, the auction and wine tasting raised $34,909 for the two nonprofit organizations.
The fire department plans to use the funds to upgrade its structure, fire helmets and a new radio repeater. These improvements will help the firefighters communicate better with each other and the station. In-Home Services will be offering support services in the homes of at-risk elderly and disabled residents of Weston County. The funds from Festival of Trees will help those in need to avoid premature institutionalization, and that will save those clients up to $7,000 in monthly assisted living or nursing home fees. The services include meal preparation, caregiver respite, yard care, shopping and Lifeline.
The fundraiser started with a meal and drinks. Long tables held a large variety of hors d’oeuvres for everyone to enjoy free of charge. For adults, there were wine glasses available for purchase at $10 apiece. Purchasers then tasted a large variety of wines throughout the evening. Beer, water, and juice were also available.
Al and Brenda Costello and Co. provided plenty of Christmas music until 7:30 p.m. Hundreds of people crowded into the main room of the center to enjoy the music, the food and the wine. 
But then the real reason for the event took the center stage. Wreaths, decorated and ready for sale, lined the walls of the room. The almost four dozen wreaths and a large Christmas tree, provided by Pinnacle Bank, were decorated by different businesses in the area and auctioned off by auctioneer Justin Mills. With his fast wit and faster talking, the bids on the wreaths often grew to epic proportions as bidding wars broke out among the fevered participants. The lowest price for a winning bid was $200. While most of the winners had to shell out in the mid to upper hundreds for the wreaths, a few brought in well over $1,000. The firefighter-decorated wreath brought in a winning bid of $1,300 by Wyoming Refinery, which then donated it back to have it auctioned off again. A second-round bid went for $500 and then there was a third. The last winning bid was $500. That brought the total funds for that wreath to $2,300. 
The re-auctioning of wreaths was not limited to just that one either. Auto Inn’s wreath, titled “White Christmas,” sold for $330, and was auctioned a second time for $260. 
Other charitable acts occurred as a couple of winners donated their wreaths after winning the bidding wars. For instance, 21 Electric’s wreath “Who’s Who,” which sold for $600, was given by Don Gorm to the Weston County Children’s Center. The Christmas tree, decorated by Friends of Festival and titled “Christmas in the Pines,” sold for $1,000 to the Fountain Inn with Newcastle Motors donating an additional $350 to the winning bid. Friends of the NRA made the wreath for the highest-grossing bidding war. Their wreath, which came with a Ruger .22 gauge revolver, sold to Shelco for $2,700.
The public voted for the best wreath during the event. The winner, a real crowd favorite wreath titled “Merry Christmas” and donated by the fire department, was the wreath that was re-auctioned twice for a total of $2,300.