No offense to its namesake, but you could have reasonably expected the second annual Pat Summitt Invitational fundraising event for Alzheimer's research to struggle to match last year's total of $75,000.
It's human nature. There's always much excitement about anything new, especially when it carries the name of the most beloved women's basketball coach in history. There also are many other charitable events out there every year and only so much money to go around. A drop-off, even for something as important as the Pat Summitt Foundation, would be understandable
But as unlikely as it may be that you can actually see seven states from Lookout Mountain, a similarly stunning claim was announced at the great mountain's golf club on Monday. The Summitt Invitational's two fundraisers this time around - last Thursday's "Toast to Pat" dinner with Charlie Daniels at Jasper Highlands and Monday's golf outing - have combined to raise at least $200,000 for the charity.
"We're at $200,000 already," Foundation director Patrick Wade said as a field of 100 golfers piled their plates high with eggs, bacon, fluffy biscuits, fried potatoes, grits and fresh fruits prior to attacking one of the South's most quietly maniacal yet majestic courses.
"That's the golf tournament, the Charlie Daniels event and some extra donations. And we could wind up a little over that total. That's huge for two reasons. One, that's a lot of money. Two, you can't put a dollar figure on all these people getting involved in the fight against Alzheimer's."
Yet as good as that news is for those on the forefront of Alzheimer's research, honorary chairperson and former Tennessee football coach Phillip Fulmer saw perhaps a better reason to feel good about the event begun last spring by Chattanooga entrepreneur John "Thunder" Thornton.
"Of all the things that have happened with this event, and they're all wonderful," Fulmer said, "Erlanger's doctors getting up there at Jasper Highlands the other night and telling us there's hope that we can defeat this terrible disease was the best part of this."
Fulmer has watched his mother deteriorate from Alzheimer's for more than a decade. He's seen the toll it's taken on his sister as their mom's primary caregiver. So he speaks about this with much knowledge, passion and concern.
"Because of Pat, and my mother and so many others, we desperately need to find a cure for this as soon as possible," he added.
Fulmer was far from the only one at Monday's golf outing to have been personally touched by Alzheimer's. Chattanooga Football Club co-founder Tim Kelly's stepfather and area basketball coaching and playing legend Wayne Farmer died with dementia.
"It's an awful disease," Kelly said. "It affects the whole family."
No one outside her biological family has been closer to Summitt than retired UT women's athletic director Joan Cronan. She still sees Summitt often, and much like Fulmer says of her old friend, "She has good days and bad days, as you might expect."
But what she's seen from Summitt every day since the coach retired at the close of the 2012 season with 1,098 wins and eight NCAA titles is "courage. We've always known Pat as a woman of leadership and integrity. But what she's taught me the last five years is that she's also a woman of amazing courage."
Much as Fulmer singled out the Erlanger Health System's important role in the Summitt Invitational, Cronan complimented the city of Chattanooga at large.
"When I think of all the wonderful memories I have of Pat and the Lady Vols in Chattanooga, all those SEC women's tournaments that were here, I just know that Pat will be thrilled with what's happened here this weekend and what will continue to happen here in the future," said Cronan, whose book, "Sports Is Life With The Volume Turned Up," is now in its second printing.
"Chattanooga will always be a special place to Pat."
Thanks to Thornton and his daughter Dori, Erlanger, Fulmer, Cronan and so many others, the Pat Summitt Invitational is becoming quite a special charity event for Chattanooga.
But befitting an old football coach always worrying about the next opponent, Fulmer already was looking ahead to next year before he'd struck the first golf shot in this year's tourney.
Said the coach of the 1998 national champs: "I just asked John a little while ago, 'How do we top this?'"
The better question, given its fantastic growth from year one to year two, given all that's at stake for Alzheimer's patients everywhere, is how can our town afford not to top it from one year to the next until the disease is defeated forever?
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.