Resident to receive honors for 20 years of volunteerism

Bernadette Gur helped established CONTACT’s annual fundraising gala

By Rosalie Ann LaGrutta, Staff Writer
   For the past 20 years, CONTACT has been a way of life for Bernadette Gur.
   And for those years, Ms. Gur will be honored at the crisis prevention hotline group’s annual fundraiser Dec. 8 at the Chauncey Conference Center at the Educational Testing Service.
   Highlighting the dinner will be Mistress of Ceremonies Lynn Doyle of Comcast Network’s “It’s Your Call,” actress Jill Whelan, who played Vicky on “Loveboat” and Amy Locane, of Hopewell, who recently performed at Off Broad Street Theatre and was a regular on the television series “Melrose Place.”
   Ms. Gur, of Nathan Hale Avenue, is a full-time employee at ETS and mother of a 15-year-old daughter. In addition, she still finds time to volunteer.
   A casual conversation two decades ago piqued Ms. Gur’s interest.
   ”About 20 years ago, I met a woman at a social event and we started talking,” she said. “During our conversation, she told me she was with CONTACT, and that was the beginning for me.”
   CONTACT of Mercer County, based out of the Trinity United Methodist Church in Ewing, is a nonprofit, volunteer organization with over 200 active volunteers, according to its Web site www.contactofmercer.org. The group has been providing free listening, crisis intervention and safety services to Mercer County residents since 1975.
   Ms. Gur took CONTACT’s six-week training program, then for 10 years volunteered on CONTACT’s crisis hotline, a number anyone can call anonymously 24 hours a day.
   ”This gives people a safe place to get help,” she said. “It was very rewarding for me knowing I was helping other people who, in some instances, had no one else to call, and hearing someone say ‘thank you’ was always very heart warming for me.”
   After manning the hotline for a decade, Ms. Gur became involved in CONTACT’s fundraising department. She said she planned to start with a small fundraiser, “but decided I wanted to raise more than $100,000. I had no idea of how to do it. I had a vision of what I wanted, but didn’t know how to go about it,” she said. “My friend Amy Smith worked with me on my first big fundraiser and I soon became the goodwill ambassador for CONTACT.”
   But Ms. Gur’s efforts through CONTACT did not stop there. About seven years ago, she sent a letter to Eleanor Horne, vice president of ETS social investment. Ms. Gur said she knew that ETS always enjoyed being a part of and helping the community. Also, at that time, ETS was starting a program to build the capacity for fundraising in a local nonprofit organization. She asked about holding fundraisers for CONTACT at the Chauncey Conference Center on the ETS grounds with ETS providing the space, food, beverages, and so on. Since then, Ms. Gur has planned and coordinated seven successful fundraiser dinners at ETS.
   Since the fundraising dinners began in 2000, fundraising totals have skyrocketed, from $6,000 annually to $75,000 last year, Ms. Horne said. More importantly, she noted, “CONTACT has been able to sustain this level of performance.”
   ”Working with Bernadette is terrific because she asks no more of her colleagues than she is willing to do herself,” said Ms. Horne. “No one deserves recognition from CONTACT more than Bernadette. She has led them to a new level of fundraising.”
   CONTACT of Mercer County, under the direction of volunteers like Ms. Gur, continues to develop existing programs and begin new ones, including a proposed plan for a hotline specifically to assist returning military men and women.
   Many of these initiatives would not have been successful without the dedication of volunteers like Bernadette Gur, said Eleanor Letcher, CONTACT’s executive director.
   ”Bernadette is intelligent, creative, dedicated and caring — always trying to move people and ideas along. It is a joy to have her with CONTACT,” she said.
   For ticket prices and additional information on the Dec. 8 event, contact Lauren at (609) 683-2413 or send e-mail to [email protected].
   CONTACT’s hotline is (609) 896-2120. To become a volunteer for CONTACT, visit contactofmercer.org.