PORT ANGELES — A community talent show at Port Angeles High School on Friday night garnered more than $3,500 for the family of a man who had suffered a brain aneurysm and was allowed to go home the day after the show.
Rachael Ward, adviser for the Leadership Class, which set up the talent show for local pastor Kevin Jones, said that some of the silent auction funds as well as the concessions that were available at the show are still being totaled, and the total could rise to near $5,000.
Jones, a longtime Port Angeles resident, was at a pastors conference in Leavenworth in November when he suffered the aneurysm, his wife, Donna, said.
Generous prize winner
He was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle and was released Saturday.
The talent show “went very well,” said Dillan Witherow, student body president.
“There were 24 acts, and all of them were phenomenal.”
In addition to the silent auction, the students also organized a “50-50 drawing” in which people in the audience bought tickets with the winner and the family splitting the prize, Ward said.
“It was really an amazing thing,” Ward said.
“The winner of the 50-50 drawing gave his half back to the family.
“Unfortunately, we don’t even have his name.”
The amount of the 50-50 drawing wasn’t available Sunday.
Julian Huxtable won bragging rights at the talent show, being named the No. 1 act for his rendition of the song “Barton Hallow,” sung originally by the indie/folk music band The Civil Wars.
Kevin Jones is a longtime employee of Sunset Do it Best Hardware and pastored Cornerstone Tabernacle, a small Port Angeles congregation.
Moved to Marysville
Donna and Kevin Jones never knew that he suffered from a lifelong genetic problem in which there are no capillaries between arteries and veins in a small portion of the right side of his brain, she said.
When he suffered a headache at the pastors conference Nov. 17, he went to lie down in his hotel room, where she found him unable to get up 45 minutes later.
Donna temporarily moved herself and their three children — Benjamin, 15, Christopher, 13, and Abigail, 10 — to Kevin’s parents’ house in Marysville, where she has continued to home-school the youths.
Although he has regained minimal movement in his left leg and has full control of his right side, doctors do not know if or when he might regain movement in the rest of his body, if he will ever work again or what kind of improvement he will make.
For now, the family will stay at Kevin’s parents’ house.
Hopes to buy minivan
Donna hopes to use some money she has already saved plus donations from the talent show to purchase a new minivan so that it will provide safer transportation once Kevin can come home.
Even if Kevin is able to walk using a cane, the Port Angeles home will still need modifications, Donna said, so that is another possibility for the use of the funds.
Although the event is over, donations may still be sent to Port Angeles High School, 304 E. Park Ave., Port Angeles, WA 98362.
A donation account has also been set up at the North Olympic Peninsula branches of Sound Community Bank.
For more information, phone Ward at 360-565-1529 or e-mail rward@portangelesschools.org.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladaily news.com.