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| Jay Tunney |
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Author Jay Tunney will tell the compelling story of friendship between his father, the heavyweight boxing champion, and literary master George Bernard Shaw when he speaks at Chatham County Literacy Council’s Spring for Literacy luncheon on April 18, 2012.
- The annual event at Governors Club in northern Chatham Count is the Council’s biggest fundraiser of the year.
- The luncheon also features both silent and live auctions.
- All proceeds fund the non-profit’s free tutoring programs, which help adults in Chatham County gain the reading, writing, and math skills and/or the civic engagement skills and naturalization they need to break the cycle of poverty.
Tunney’s book, The Prizefighter and the Playwright, recounts the bond between his father, Gene Tunney, and Shaw, the British playwright and poet. Copies will be available for sale and signing at the luncheon.
The program will be in the form of an interview by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Chatham County resident Walter Mears, followed by questions from the audience. Mears and Tunney are longtime friends.
Gene Tunney, who in the 1920s beat Jack Dempsey to win the world championship in one of the most famed of heavyweight fights, was 40 years younger than Shaw and hardly from the same world. Shaw wrote that Tunney was one of his very few close friends, a bond they shared privately despite the celebrity of both men.
In 2000, Jay Tunney co-wrote and presented a BBC Radio documentary on the relationship, The Master and the Boy. It became the basis for the book he then spent years researching and writing. He is vice president of the International Shaw Society and an international businessman whose career included oil exploration in Burma and the founding and operation of the first premium ice cream company in South Korea. His magazine articles and essays that have appeared in dozens of publications worldwide.
The luncheon is $50 a person, of which $28 is a tax-deductible contribution to the Literacy Council.
To complete the registration form online, go to: http://02d0190.netsolhost.com/springforliteracy.html
To register by mail, send a check to Chatham County Literacy Council, PO Box 1696, Pittsboro, N.C. 27312, with a note listing the people in your party, your e-mail address for confirmation, and any dietary restrictions.
The deadline for registration is March 30.
For more information on the event, contact the Council (919-742-0578 or admin@chathamliteracy.org), or email luncheon co-chairs Sharon Livingston (sslivings@aol.com) or Marga Theelen (marga.theelen@gmail.com).
For more information on Tunney and the book, go to http://www.tunney-shaw.com/index.html.
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