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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. A receipt for your donation will be sent to you (by email whenever possible) along with your reservation confirmation.
For more information on the event, contact the Council (919-542-6424 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.
The deadline for registration is March 30th.
To register and pay online, please complete the form below.
To register by mail, please download the registration form below and return it with a check payable to Chatham County Literacy Council, PO Box 1696, Pittsboro, N.C. 27312.
Registration information.
- Reservations will be processed in the order received. We cannot process any reservations without payment.
- Refund requests will be honored, but only if received in writing or by email before March 23.
- Reservations are transferrable. Please notify us in writing or by email of changes in names for reserved seating so that we may update our reservation list for admission.
- If the Spring for Literacy luncheon is sold out when we receive your request, we will notify you, put your name on the waiting list, and hold your check until the day of the event. We will contact you if seats become available.
- Additional information is available by visiting www.chathamliteracy.org or calling Vicki Newell at 919-542-6424.
- Confirmations and will be sent by email whenever possible. If you don’t receive a confirmation within a week of your submission, please contact the Council at 919-542-6424 or at admin@chathamliteracy.org to ensure we have received your reservation request.
- No separate ticket will be issued.
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