CCDH

The annual tournament was founded seven years ago by a 12-year-old for a community service project.

By Michelle Hammontree-Garcia
Special to The Miami Herald

Call, fold or kick.

These are decisions one makes when playing Texas Hold’em poker. The game may evoke images of men in a smoky room, drinking whisky and clutching cards with one goal in mind: winning the pot.

But this wasn’t the case Sunday during the seventh annual poker tournament for charity in Pinecrest’s Bet Shira congregation, which raised close to $5,000 for the Community Committee for Developmental Handicaps. Children as young as six years old played with their parents and grandparents.

Also making the multi-generational event memorable was the passing of the baton from the tournament’s founder, Michael Grey, 19, to Jay and Brian Morrison, who are 10 and 12.

Grey started the tournament as a community service project for his bar mitzvah in 2004. He chose to donate the funds from the charity tournament to the committee, which uses the funds to help disabled children repair and update their wheelchairs, because when he was 11 he spent close to a year in a wheelchair after reconstructive foot surgery.

In order to ride a Miami Dade school bus, wheel chairs must fit guidelines that require a certain size of chair, specific brakes and  harnesses. Also, batteries need to be replaced every six months or so and can cost up to $600.

“Wheelchairs are like shoes. You grow out of them,” said Grey. “I wanted to make sure these children could attend school. It is a question of mobility and having the opportunity to attend class like anyone else.”

The Morrison boys stepped up to the plate as the organizers of the tournament when they heard Grey was off to the University of Florida to study accounting.

“We love poker and just wanted to help make a difference for less fortunate kids. I also hope others will learn from what we are doing and do the same,” said Brian, who attends George Washington Carver Middle School and is in the Spanish IB program.

Jay and Brian learned how to play poker when they were 4 and 5 years old from their grandfather, Eddie “Papa” Ginsburg. After finishing law school, Ginsburg played poker with his friends every Wednesday night for 40 years, so when he retired, playing poker with the boys was only natural.

“It’s an intellectual challenge for the boys and frankly, just a lot of fun,” said Ginsburg, who lives in Palmetto Bay. “They learned arithmetic early on. It teaches them to be serious about their decisions and how to foresee what cards other players may have.

”Close by the boy’s grandmother, Rita Ginsburg, added: “Jay taught me how to play.”

Cathy Berkowitz, the community liaison for community committee, is proud of Grey and how he turned a bar mitzvah project into an ongoing event that has helped countless disabled children attend school.

“He didn’t have to do it the second year and he didn’t have to find a family to keep the tournament going, after he left to college,” said Berkowitz. “Our organization wouldn’t be able to this without Michael. His tenacity is impressive.”

To date the tournaments have raised close to $20,000 for the CCDH.

Jennifer Press, a newbie to poker, attended the event with her son Joey Kravetz, 10, and daughter Rachael Kravetz, 11.

While playing next to Joey, Press said “I came to do a good deed, a mitzvah.” Rachael didn’t play but along with other girls her age, passed out refreshments, pizza and poker chips.

“It feels good to help less fortunate people. I am very lucky to be able to attend school and have nice things,” said Rachael, who is in the sixth grade at Gulliver Academy. “I know that one day you can have everything and the next you may lose it all. Kinda like poker.
 

CCDH STAFF MEMBER HONORED AS TOP PARTNER IN POLICYMAKING

Irene Ballart, CCDH’s Senior Family Support Coordinator, is a 2010 graduate of the Florida Developmental Disabilities Council’s PARTNERS IN POLICYMAKING

program.
Partners in Policymaking is a leadership and advocacy training program that teaches self-advocates and parents to be community leaders and how to obtain best available services for themselves and others.  Based on a national model, the goal of the program is to develop productive partnerships between people who need and use services and those in a position to make policy and law.
 
Irene’s fellow graduates voted to award her the Alan C. Wesley Award in honor of “exemplary partnering and leadership”.  “Participating in the Partners program was a wonderful opportunity for me,” said Ballart.  “It gave me the opportunity to see how all the advocacy work I have done over my daughter’s lifetime fits into the bigger picture.”  Irene’s daughter, Christine, has spina bifida.  Having fought to insure her inclusion in public school classes, Chrissy is now a 23 year old student attending Miami-Dade College.  Congratulations, Irene!

CCDH PRESIDENT AND CEO RECEIVES WILKIE FERGUSON LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

CCDH President and CEO, Helene J. Good, was awarded the Wilkie Ferguson Lifetime Achievement Award at the September meeting of the Florida Association of Rehabilitation Facilities (Florida ARF).   The award is named in memory of the Honorable Wilkie D. Ferguson, a former United States District Court Judge. During the 1990’s, Judge Ferguson presided over landmark cases affirming the rights of individuals with developmental disabilities to receive needed services under the federal Medicaid program.  “Judge Ferguson saw these class action law suits as a matter of civil rights for individuals with disabilities,” said Good.  “His rulings not only helped thousands of Floridians, but became precedent-setting decisions that were used in similar suits throughout the United States.  It is a truly humbling experience to be chosen for this award by the Florida ARF Council of Chairs – many of the members of which are the agency directors who had the courage to fight the State of Florida, two Governors, and an unresponsive bureaucracy."

Helene Good Honored by Family Central

Ms. Helene Good, CCDH's President and CEO was honored May 24th by Family Central.

Ms. Good received an advocacy award for those

committed to "changing children's lives for a lifetime". CCDH and Family Central have partnered on projects focusing on inclusion. Through its Trust-funded ACT (All Children Together) Project, CCDH has provided Family Central's Home Visitor and Center Based early education programs with staff training, technical assistance, and adaptive materials and supplies. The two organizations have also collaborated on a grant application. Keeping advocacy all in the family, we learned that Family Central's President, Barbara Weinstein, is the sister of our own long-time advocate and Board Member, Larry Forman.

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