In an article in the SI Advance about the CWF, written in 2016 by Cormac Gordon, readers were given an intimate glimpse into the workings of this unique charity. In a foundation directors’ meeting we see a group of regular folk assembled around a dining room table in a private home.
On this occasion, the upcoming golf outing/fundraiser was being planned. The discussion was simple, amicable and somewhat brief, for such an crucial event. The fundraiser is the only campaign the organization holds each year to raise funds. The meeting was emblematic of the foundation itself: uncomplicated, they’re working to simply serve our young people in need.
Christopher Whitehouse Foundation is a perfect Island fit
Published: Aug. 25, 2016, 11:10 a.m.
By Cormac Gordon | gordonc@siadvance.com
GENOVESE SI Sports Hall of Fame inductee Peter Whitehouse (R) with fellow honorees George Genovese and Teddy Atlas.
It’s become a ritual over the past 17 years.
A group of Islanders, most of them with hair of gray (and some with no hair at all), gather around the dining-room table at Pete and Pat Whitehouse’s Castleton Corners home.
They busy themselves reading letters about kids who could use a hand, mostly written by school guidance counselors.
While at it, the group talks.
Some take notes.
Others don’t.
“What can we do to help?” is the first question of the moment.
“How can we do it quietly?” is the next.
That is the work of the Christopher Whitehouse Foundation, a group founded to remember the late son of Pete and Pat.
“It’s all about kids in need,” longtime committee member Bill Magnuski says of those meetings. “Our goal is to help everyone who asks, if we can find a way to do it.”
They usually do find a path to helping out the teenagers they look to serve.
Folks like Magnuski, Tom Dicks, Joe and Nancy Delaney, Marty McGowan, they do the work, iron out the bumps.
And people who contribute find themselves funding trips for groups of kids with learning disabilities, buying instruments for talented would-be musicians who can’t afford the price of a clarinet or a guitar.
Or paying the bill on a prom dress, or picking up the tab for a college application fee.
School books, football cleats, SAT courses, yearbooks, you name it.
In the end, for all the Islanders involved it’s about lending some support to folks who need it.
And maybe, along the way, brightening the worldview of a kid in a tough spot.
“A good, simple idea,” says Dicks, an Island educator for close to a half century.
And it is just that, though the results are anything but simple to the teenagers involved.
“We try to accommodate as many people as we can,” said Magnuski, who is the borough commander of the American Legion when he’s not doing all his other good deeds around town. “Pete and his family do great work.”
In that way the foundation is very much carrying on in the tradition of Christopher Whitehouse, himself.
The younger Whitehouse was a crisis counselor who was working on his doctorate at the University of Florida when he collapsed and died at the heartbreakingly early age of 29.
Shortly thereafter, family and friends drew together and formed the foundation.
They looked for a fitting way to honor Christopher Whitehouse’s brief life.
They got together, threw some money into a bank account, and began reaching out to local high school counselors to see about needs that slip through the Island school system’s cracks.
It’s worked wonders.
Through the years there have been more than 1,000 Island students who’ve been helped in these small but significant ways, all in the memory of a 29-year-old who thought this sort of outreach vitally important.
“It’s become something that is very personal to all of us,” Magnuski said of the work of the foundation.
Next month the Christopher Whitehouse Foundation will be holding its annual golf outing.
Think of participation as a way to expand that group who sit at Peter and Pat’s dining-room table each year and read the stories of kids in need.
This year the date is Friday, Sept. 23 at Silver Lake Golf Course.
Afterward there’s a diner at the Staaten.
Those interested can attend golf and dinner, or one or the other.
They can simply sponsor a hole.
Or just drop the foundation a check.
(For more information in regard to the Christopher Whitehouse Foundation contact Peter Whitehouse at 718-761-0499, or mail checks or questions to in care of the foundation to 201 Todt Hill Rd., S.I., N.Y. 10314)
Original Article can be found:
Christopher Whitehouse Foundation is a perfect Island fit – silive.com