Photo provided by David Camera
Dave Camera, in front, is pictured with the group planning a party to raise money for this year’s Camera Foundation’s selected beneficiary.The Color Me Pink event, to be held at Chez Joseph on January 13th, will be the first of a planned series of great parties. Standing in the photo are, from the left, Michael DiLorenzo, Stephanie Dolan, Karen Camera and Kristi Blad.
An inveterate party goer and party giver, Dave Camera has an interesting day job. He is the proprietor of Shoreline Audio-Visual, a Suffield business that plans and sets up the equipment for a large variety of conventions, presentations, and other big events – including parties – typically for non-profit fundraising. The company took its name from its early location in Madison but has been here over a dozen years.
Now he has decided to focus his business competence and extracurricular enthusiasm on a good cause. He has established a new 501(c)(3) organization called the Camera Foundation, whose mission each year is to ease the burden of a carefully chosen local individual devastated financially in his or her struggle with cancer. Dave says, “I don’t want to just help people, I want to change their lives – one life at a time.”
He has had themes for his parties in the past, including last year’s holiday event, when 250 people attended the “Blue Ball.” A September party at the Suffield Country Club attracted 150 people and helped a homeowner with $2,000 to pay for fuel oil. The first to be held under the auspices of the new foundation, with a portion of the admission fee properly tax deductible, will benefit Beth from East Hartford, who is fighting her breast cancer, so the theme will be “Color Me Pink.”
Dave has rented Chez Josef from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. on January 13, and engaged a band called Derek and the Fun Bags to provide great music. With 400 tickets ordered by mid-November after only two weeks on sale, he expects something like 500 revelers, at $100 each, and invites visits to The Camera Foundation on Facebook for a link to “Color Me Pink.”