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Opening general session

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A set of New Orleans Times-Picayune front pages from the days following Hurricane Katrina went to Don Podesta of the Washington Post for $550 .

Having fun and helping out

Bidders found just what they were looking for
in the ACES silent and live auctions



By Gerri Berendzen

Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader copy chief Brian Throckmorton walked out of the ACES silent auction Friday night as the winner of "a major award."

Or maybe it was a plastic leg lamp, complete with fishnet stocking.

But the real winner Friday was the ACES Education Fund, which benefited from the proceeds of one of the most eclectic silent auctions in the American Copy Editors Society's 10-year history.

Whether people were jealous of Throckmorton's purchased award is unclear. What is clear is that many ACES members were willing to open their checkbooks to help out.


Spirited bidding for silent-auction items ranging from a print of the Sex Pistols to a bottle of Sass Pinot Noir, and from the "Christmas Story"-inspired leg lamp to a set of 2005 World Series tickets for the Cleveland Indians, helped raise $4,950.96 for the Education Fund coffers.

Later in the evening, the bidding started again at a live auction held after the banquet keynote speech, this time raising $3,075 to help the New Orleans Times-Picayune Hurricane Relief Fund.

Copy chief Paula Devlin of the New Orleans Times-Picayune models a Times-Picayune "come hell or high water" T-shirt autographed by members of her desk. Four of the shirts sold for $975 during live bidding Friday night at the ACES banquet. The live auction raised money for hurricane relief.

ACES auctionmeister Scott Toole, news editor of the Express-Times in Easton, Pa., urged ACES members to "bid with your hearts and not with your heads."

He took that to heart, bidding $225 for a Times-Picayune "Come Hell or High Water" T-shirt autographed by the members of the T-P copy desk.

Don Podesta of the Washington Post helped out with a $550 winning bid for a complete set of Times-Picayune front page prints from the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina.

Others who helped the Hurricane Relief Fund with winning live auction bids were Sara Hendricks of the Victoria (Texas) Advocate ($150 for a set of autographed Katrina photographs), Melissa McCoy of the Los Angeles Times ($500 for tuition to the API News Editors and Copy Chiefs seminar and $275 for a T-P autographed T-shirt), Mary Gladstone of Religion Link ($150 for the book "One Dead in the Attic"), Rebecca Dyer of Tribune Newspapers in Mesa, Ariz. ($250 for a T-P autographed T-shirt), Neil Holdway of the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, Ill.,($225 for a T-P T-shirt), ACES co-founder Hank Glamann ($125 for a Cleveland Plain Dealer toy bicycle and $225 for a Beatles print) and Daniel Hunt of the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif. ($100 for a Beatles print).

At the silent auction, things got off to a quick start when Melissa Spirek of Bowling Green State University came into the auction room and signed her name to any newspaper-related items being offered.

Spirek was hoping to bring home a few goodies for her own silent auction, conducted for journalism students at her university. Her plans to "re-auction" for education's sake dovetailed nicely with ACES goal of raising money for its Education Fund.

Tammy Yates of the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., and Kathy Schenck of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also helped out with lively bidding for a print of the Sex Pistols.

"We're probably the last two people at this convention who look like Sex Pistols fans," Yates said.

After Yates got the print up to $80, Schneck slipped behind her and upped the price to $85. But she knew the bidding wasn't done.

"Tammy will be back," Schenck said.

She was right. Yates finally came in with the winning bid of $90.

But that didn't match the highest winning bid of the night, $120 by the New York Times‚ Merrill Perlman for the bottle of Sass wine. Liz McGehee of the Washington Post was close behind with a $110 bid for a Beatles print.

But whether the bid was $5 or $120, people were having fun stalking out their item while helping out ACES.

"I bid $4 on the Crawford, Texas, pocketknife," said TV Week's Jenny Butler. "Then someone came up behind me and bid $20. I think I‚m going to wait around and bid $21 at the last minute -- a little bid sniping like you do on eBay."

The auction once again got rave reviews.

"All I can say is 'wow,' " Patricia Cole of the Washington Times told Toole as he prepared to count down the last seconds of the auction.

With five minutes left and the tension mounting, Toole called out "no elbowing, no pushing, no punching." Someone yelled "Right, Merrill" as the silent auction came to a close.


Gerri Berendzen is copy desk chief of the Quincy (Ill.) Herald-Whig. She can be reached at gberendzen@whig.com.

Melissa Spirek, a Bowling Green State University professor, places her bid.

Bill Walsh (Washington Post), center, chats with Bill Fink and Jennifer Johnson, both of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Browsing through the books at the silent auction are, from left, Nicole Stockdale (Dallas Morning News), Christine Steele (The Capital Group Companies) and Wendalyn Nichols (Copy Editor newsletter).