Great Neck Country Club raises $12,000 for TBBCF

By Melissa Johnson

Great Neck Country Club (GNCC) held its annual golf tournament benefiting TBBCF on Aug. 9 this year and was able to raise $12,000 for the foundation. Kenny Hall, Margrette Pasteryak, Carole Capodiece, Maureen Butler and Heather Vigneau presented the foundation with a check on Aug. 29.

Butler and Vigneau, co-chairs of the GNCC Women’s Association, sat down for an interview shortly after the tournament. They agreed it was a great day with a nice turnout of 100 golfers making up 25 foursomes. Vigneau said they’d like to have a few more in the future, perhaps closer to 30 foursomes.

For her part, Butler said she became interested in golf about 13 years ago when she and her husband moved to North Carolina. “I had no job, I had no friends or family,” she said. “We lived on a golf course, and so I started taking lessons and got involved with the women down there.”

Vigneau has been golfing for about a decade—eight years at Cedar Ridge and four years at GNCC. “I started because my kids are all grown up,” she said. “I golfed on and off since my 20s, but with kids you can’t really do it. I did it more to start having time with my husband and my father.”

As for the Women’s Association tournament benefiting TBBCF, Vigneau said she participates because she went to high school with Terri Brodeur herself.

Butler said, “I decided to volunteer because they were looking for new committee members this year, and I thought, ‘This is a great cause.’ I’ve known a few people who have gone through breast cancer. My sister-in-law actually just finished treatment for breast cancer, so that was all fresh in my mind. And I just thought, you know, I really want to contribute something, do something good, so I thought this would be a good cause and it turned out a lot more rewarding than I thought it was going to be.”

This year the event consisted of the golf game, which took about four hours, and a raffle. The 23 raffle prizes included a lighthouse cruise, a birdhouse, and black label Irish whiskey. Participants had to be members of GNCC or their guests.

The committee has more plans for next year, including foursome spots for members of businesses who donate over a certain amount. Butler said, “I know Heather has talked to other fundraising people who had given her some good ideas for next year, so hopefully we can reach out to more businesses next year.”

Vigneau said, “We haven’t really been doing a ceremony at the end of it because of COVID the last few years, so it’s been box lunches, and most people don’t stay after the tournament, so next year we’re hoping we can get back to doing a true tournament with a luncheon afterward.”

Butler said, “We had other people on the committee also. Margrette and Carole did all the raffles and made up the mulligan packets and little goodie bags. I think the owners of the course, Dave and Ann Mortimer, donated the prize money, so that was nice.”

She added, “People had fun, we got compliments on it. The former committee told us what a great job we did, so that was good to hear because we didn’t want to disappoint people. You put a lot of work and pride into it all, so you want it to turn out well, you want it to do well. We all took pride in it.”