Fundraiser for TJ Goemaat A Huge Success
Family, Friends and Community poured into the Penn Activity Center on Saturday night to show support for TJ Goemaat
Oskaloosa, Iowa – Parking wasn’t a problem anywhere in town Saturday evening unless you were at the Penn Activity Center.
A community got together to help show support for one of our own, and in the process we ended up amazing ourselves at what could be done.
Young North Mahaska 4th grader TJ Goemaat has recently been diagnosed with brain cancer. Friends, family and community came together and started the process weeks ago in making Saturday night possible.
Tyler Sash had set up to sign autographs for $10.00 per signed item. When it was all said and done, no one was quite sure how many he signed.
A dinner ticket was also being sold for $5.00 each. A person had their choice of a hamburger grilled by the Mahaska County Cattleman’s Association or, TJ’s favorite, a 3 inch sub donated by Subway. Pepsi products were donated by Mahaska Bottling and dozens and dozens of homemade cookies were provided by the bakers of the United Methodist Church in New Sharon.
1200 tickets were available, and they were sold out half way through the event.
There were inflatable bounce houses, carnival games, a photo booth, face painting and video games for kids of all ages to enjoy.
2 separate auctions were part of the planned evening activities. A silent auction was scheduled from 5 to 7 pm, but was extended due to the exceptionally large crowd. The live auction kicked off at 7 and featured many items that local businesses had donated, as well as NASCAR drivers such as Dale Earnhardt Jr and Carl Edwards. There were also many items donated by Tyler Sash and several other athletes.
Allen Goemaat who hadn’t had his hair cut in about 8 years offered up to have his hair cut off by the inch in order to raise funds.
When he took his seat in the barber chair, over $8,000 dollars had been raised just to see Allen’s hair get buzzed off. When completed, Allen opened up his shirt to reveal a t-shirt underneath that said “All for TJ”.
Those long locks didn’t go to waste, Allen donated it to ‘Locks of Love’.
Margie Greenhalgh, who helped with getting the event organized said, “This was a joint effort between the communities of New Sharon, Oskaloosa and Eddyville. Our committee was a group of 15 individuals from both the New Sharon community and Central Reformed Church in Oskaloosa that worked so well together.”
“When we first talked about a fundraiser, the Goemaats wanted it to be an evening that TJ would enjoy to attend and that was the goal we based our decisions on. We thought we would have a large crowd, but we never dreamed the evening would be what it was. It was amazing.”
Levi Tarbell, who is the Director at the Penn Activity Center, put crowd estimates at 6,000 to 7,000 people in all that came and went during the evening.
“We did raise $107,250.50 that night”, is the total currently available says Greenhalgh. You can visit TJ’s caring Bridge Page HERE.
