Saturday night, Oct. 4 was the 21st year of the Carousel Fund Casino Night fund-raiser. As always, it was a sold out affair held at the Veterans Auditorium here in Petaluma. There were 1,500 attendees including our Mayor, Pamela Torliatt, 3 of our City Council members and past baseball stars, Rollie Fingers, Vida Blue and Dave Kingman. The Carousel Fund concept was spearheaded 21 years ago by Arnie Cohen and Bill Willitts and has raised close to 3 million dollars to help hundreds of families in our community. The purpose of raising money is to assist families that have a child with a catastrophic illness. My son Jacob was one of
those that was helped. I am VERY proud to be on the Board of Directors of this amazing group of citizens ...18 years for me. My band, the Peter Welker All-Stars, has played for 16 of these events. My "special guests" have included Huey Lewis, Mickey Thomas, Elvin Bishop, Charlie Musselwhite, John Hammond, Tommy Castro and Eddie Money. This year I called on Roy Rogers. Last night Roy was on fire!! He thrilled the crowd with 8 blues songs that were classics. My 9 piece all star band backed him up exceptionally and all of the musicians had a fabulous time playing for the hundreds of dancers!!
Our auctioneer this year was Arnie Cohen, who did a masterful job!! Once again, this gala evening was a
HUGE success!!!
Thank you Arnie, Susan and all of the donors and volunteers ... and of course, our caring and generous community for making this such a SPECIAL evening!!!