MORGANTOWN — The highly anticipated West Virginia Grand Bash took place Saturday at Mylan Park. People from all over came with tickets in hand to win some incredible prizes including cars and vacations. The venue was packed from wall to walk with hopeful ticket holders hoping to go home with some great prizes.
The Hoss Foundation, Operation Welcome Home, WVU Children’s Medicine and Mission For Miracles were organizations benefitting from the fundraiser. John Throckmorton, the founder of the Grand Bash, said it was inspired by his daughter Meg’s journey when she was paralyzed in an accident as a teenager.
“She was supposed to be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, be on a ventilator for the rest of her life and received treatments that were designed from the Miami Project but they were done at West Virginia Children’s,” he said
He said she started moving 13 days after her accident. He said now she’s walking and doing great. She recently graduated from college in May of 2018 and is doing fantastic, said Throckmorton.
“It motivated us. Life wasn’t the same when we came back. Even when she was getting better we just decided we needed to do something different,” he said.
This year marks the fifth Grand Bash. Throckmorton said this year is by far the largest one ever held. He said 10,000 tickets were sold for the event and there were close to 6,000 people at Mylan Park Saturday. All money from proceeds will benefit the organizations, and Greater Morgantown Convention and Visitors Bureau’s Jamie Sutherland also lent a hand in event planning.
“It’s a very unique partnership between obviously a very large hospital and smaller non-profits that drive it. It’s a nice, good fit for us,” he said.
Throckmorton said some may not realize how critical WVU Children’s is until they need to utilize their services.
“They’re there for you. That’s what I found out and realized how important they really are and we just wanted to give back to the community because of what they do for us,” he said.
Throckmorton said the turnout was overwhelming and a little daunting to keep up. However, that only prompts better things in the future.
“It’s been great. The support we’ve gotten from the community has just been fantastic and now we’re just trying to figure out how to make it bigger and better,” he said.
