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Pub party helps sponsor guide dogs
By JENNIFER CONWAY
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 5, 2000
With a steak dinner and an acoustic guitar performance, the Halfway to St. Patty's Day party at the Irish Fox and Hounds pub is more than the corned beef and cabbage and shamrocks usually symbolic of the holiday.
It's a fundraiser to help support Southeastern Guide Dogs, Inc., a non-profit organization in Manatee County that trains dogs who become eyes for the blind.
The fundraiser is the brainchild of Marion Gwizdala, president of the East Hillsborough chapter of the National Federation of the Blind, and Brenda "Aunt B" Gerhard, owner of the Irish pub in Brandon. Gwizdala, who is a musician and also blind, often plays at the pub.
Gerhard felt the fundraiser would be a good opportunity for the public to get acquainted with those who cannot see.
"It's a great way to bring together their world and ours," Gerhard said.
Gerhard and Gwizdala felt that the pub's anniversary, which just happens to fall six months from St. Patrick's Day, would be the perfect day for the fundraiser.
The event, in its second year, helps sponsor a guide dog. It raised $3,300 last year, a third of the $10,000 needed to breed and train a puppy. Gwizdala hopes to raise about $5,000 this year.
Food for Sunday evening includes the Fox and Hounds' traditional Irish menu accompanied by an outdoor steak barbecue.
Southeastern Guide Dogs accepts as donations anything that can be resold. A bed, sports equipment, collector's coins and doll house accessories have already been donated.
AT A GLANCE
WHAT: Fundraiser for Southeastern Guide Dogs Inc.
WHERE: Irish Fox and Hounds Pub, 229 E Brandon Blvd.
WHEN: 6 p.m. Sunday CALL: (813) 685-8151
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