DALLAS TWP. — The Lake Lehman Foundation is aiming to make tea and scones as synonymous with the holiday season as Santa’s milk and cookies.
The non-profit organization held its first ladies’ holiday tea Dec. 10 to raise money for its scholarship program. Lake-Lehman School District Assistant Superintendent and foundation board member Tracey Liparela said the annual event was moved from its usual spring timeframe and will likely remain a holiday fixture moving forward.
“We just thought that it would be a nice time of year for people to give the gift of time to each other and spend the Sunday together and, at the same time, help with our scholarship fund,” Liparela said.
Between the $25 ticket price and afternoon basket raffles, the foundation hoped to raise over $1,000 for its two scholarships, The Knights of the Round Table Scholarship and Lake-Lehman Scholarship. The ticket price included tea and coffee, salad, tea sandwiches and dessert, with entertainment provided by Lake-Lehman High School’s Black Knight Chorale.
Liparela said approximately 150 guests attended the event, including members of the public, Lake-Lehman students, mothers of students and a table of cousins who referred to themselves as the traveling tea drinkers.
“First of all, we like the idea it was for high school scholarships,” said Hanover Township resident Romayne Karpinski. “And we enjoy getting together with our cousins. It was two-fold.”
The group included Rita Garrison, grandmother of two Lake-Lehman High School graduates. Garrison said the group goes to one tea a year, and she and her cousins give Lake-Lehman Foundation’s holiday tea a score of “10.”
“This is nice,” Garrison said.
Young ladies of the tea
Lake-Lehman Foundation board member Ellen Boyer was quick to praise the foundation’s team of interns for its work on the event.
High school junior Alyssya Raczkowski, sophomore Shelby Traver, freshman Riley Egan and eighth-graders McKenna Budzak and Megan Hogan made advertisements, created the event’s program and assisted with tasks during the tea.
Budzak and Hogan said they wanted to establish themselves in their school’s community at an early age, while Egan was inspired by her mother’s membership in the foundation.
Traver, whose participation in foundation events dates back to her junior high years, said the internship taught valuable lessons.
“I have learned the importance of hard work and putting your soul into something for other people,” Traver said. “The foundation is completely non-profit and they’re just doing it so the people in our community can excel and go to college or trade school.”
For Raczkowski, the internship was about advancing the foundation.
“It’s important to help out the community and show people what Lake-Lehman Foundation is all about,” she said.
