WHITEHALL — For the second straight year, Fetch Brewery was the site for United Way of the Lakeshore’s Spin, Give and Shave Wednesday night.
The event started last year as something of a lark; United Way’s annual March Beards for Books fundraiser culminates with a Shave-Off event in Muskegon, but a few board members had conflicts that prevented them from attending last year. Rich Houtteman, of Whitehall, was one of them and came up with the idea of a separate event to raise more money. The Spin, Give and Shave, featuring Houtteman spinning classic records on vinyl, was enough of a hit that it was brought back this year, with more participation - six hirsute gentlemen came out to get a month’s worth of beards shaved off by Bret Balcom of the Deadmen’s hair salon, up from three last year.
The annual Beards for Books benefits Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, an initiative that provides free books to children each month up to age five. United Way’s chief philanthropy officer, JJ Lewis, said 65 percent of eligible children in the county are signed up, but there’s always room to grow.
“For (a donation of) about $30 a year, a child will receive a book a month for free to them thanks to donors and donations,” Lewis said. “You really can’t beat that. They’re high-quality books. We know that early reading is important, and this is one way that we can really do some cool things.”
One of the six to participate was Michael Ramsey, a former Muskegon city commissioner who joked that he would wear the “Beard of Shame.” He said he had raised only 40 percent of his fundraising goal and had pledged in advance that if he fell short of his goal, he would get the fraction of his beard shaved off to match the fraction of his fundraising goal. It created an amusing image as Ramsey followed through and had Balcom remove only two-fifths of his beard.
Houtteman participated for the second year in a row, of course, as did retired Consumers Energy employee Roger Morgenstern. Joining them were James Vander Hulst, Robert Medendorp and Andrew Zahrt.
Lewis said the 25 Beards for Books participants countywide had a collective fundraising goal of $35,000. The goal has not been met to date, but donations continue, and each donation up to a $50,000 total is being matched dollar for dollar by an anonymous donor. Fetch owner Jen Hain also announced prior to the shaving taking place that the brewery would make a donation to the cause even though the brewery was unable to rename any of its beverages for the occasion, as it did a year ago by changing its popular Jinkies beer to Grizzly Rich in Houtteman’s honor.
Lewis said interested donors can visit unitedwaylakeshore.org for more information on how to donate.
“At the end of the day, we’re just trying to make sure that there’s books in the hands of kids,” Lewis said. “This is an amazing program.”
