GALA RAISES $10,000 FOR MARCH OF DIMES

With platefuls of barbecue pork, bowls of bread pudding and cups of flaming coffee, local restaurants and merchants helped the March of Dimes raise over $10,000 on Saturday at the Gourmet Gala Chef's Auction.

"Nobody else really does anything like this," said Mike Seabaugh, chairman of the Southeast Division of the March of Dimes.

The fourth annual gala attracted a few hundred to the Osage Center to sample food from three restaurants and the Student Missouri Restaurant Association and participate in silent and live auctions.

Auctions offered prints depicting Cape Girardeau's riverfront skyline, dinners at area restaurants, a year's supply of pizza and many other items.

Seabaugh had high hopes for travel packages offering Branson vacations, along with other gifts, raising money to help educate women about birth defects.

The key to fighting birth defects is education, Seabaugh said.

This is especially true in the Bootheel region, said Susan Davis, division director of Southeast Division of the March of Dimes. Levels of infant mortality remain higher in the Bootheel than any other part of the state, she said.

Money raised from the gala can be used in much the same way that a $30,000 grant from the national March of Dimes is being used now, Seabaugh said.

The grant, which is the first of its kind that Southeast Missouri's March of Dimes has ever received, is tracking young women in New Madrid County from before pregnancy starts to two years after babies are born, Davis said.

These are the same young women who smoke and drink alcohol for many months during their pregnancies before considering pre-natal care.

"These are the people we need to reach most," Seabaugh said.