Helping Hands golf event
benefits scholarship fund
Marion MacReynolds selects the winner of a door prize at the Helping Hands Golf Tournament as tournament organizer Gary Rette lends a hand. MacReynolds is the wife of the late Robert MacReynolds, in whose name the event was held to benefit a scholarship fund at Allentown High School.
ALLENTOWN — Organizers of the area’s annual Helping Hands Golf Tournament have raised $3,000 to support an Allentown High School scholarship fund.
The proceeds of the Oct. 9 event will benefit the Robert MacReynolds Scholarship Fund, explained Gary Rette, who organized the tournament with Mike Courtney for the group that is affiliated with the Emley’s Hill United Methodist Church, Upper Freehold.
The scholarship, awarded to an AHS student, honors MacReynolds, a teacher and coach in the Upper Freehold Regional School District who died Nov. 10, 1999, at the age of 55 during open-heart surgery in Milwaukee, Wis.
Rette said Helping Hands, which this fall held its third annual golf outing, made the connection with the MacReynolds scholarship fund because MacReynolds’ son, Robert, is the music director at the church.
The event was held at Knob Hill, Manalapan.
"Local organizations and the local business community were very generous with their hole sponsorships," Rette said. "Next year Helping Hands will select another local cause or family to benefit from our golf outing."
In previous years, the Helping Hands Golf Tournament has benefited a local family raising triplets (1998) and breast cancer research (1999), Rette said.
Sponsors of the 2000 event included Allentown Auto Body; First Union Bank; Dittmar Insurance Agency; Buy Rite Liquor; American Skandia Investments, Jonathan Chacko; First Union Securities, Jonathan Chacko; Fleet Bank; the Floor Store; the Hair Company; the Happy Apple Inn; the Hartford Life Insurance Company; Huneke Associates; JeDean Fine Jewelers; Dr. Leonard T. Kelly.
Also, La Piazza Ristorante; Mary and Francine Pasch; New Egypt United Methodist Church; New Egypt Marketplace; Nike Investments, Jonathan Chacko; Personnel Travel Consultants; Putnam Investments, Jonathan Chacko; Music Lessons with Rob MacReynolds; Rosario’s Deli; Kurry J. Walsh; Shore Point Distributing; First Union Insurance Group; Woody’s Towne Cafe; and the Peppler Funeral Home.
MacReynolds, a 1962 graduate of Allentown High School, returned to the Upper Freehold Regional School District after graduating from college to become an English teacher at the elementary-middle school in the 1970s. He went on to become a part-time job placement coordinator and part-time English teacher at the high school, before joining the school’s guidance department as a counselor in the late 1980s.
MacReynolds became Allentown’s varsity softball coach and went on to guide a number of his teams to championships.
Following MacReynolds’ death, school administrators decided to establish a memorial scholarship fund to perpetuate his legacy and his work at the school. The annual scholarship is to be awarded to a graduating senior who is a softball player with a record of academic excellence and who meets financial need criteria.