FORKS — Marcia Bingham, the volunteer coordinator for this weekend’s Quillayute Valley Scholarship Auction, feels “loopy but triumphant.”
After putting in long hours to pull off this year’s scholarship auction that raised more than $55,000, Bingham called the event a big success.
“It was just incredible,” she said Monday.
“We had so many wonderful items go up for sale, I just don’t know where to begin.”
Hundreds of people visited the Forks’ Bank of America branch Saturday and Sunday where the annual auction — held in Forks since 1964 — brings the community together to raise funds for Forks and Quileute high school graduates going on to college and trade schools.
While people and organizations donated cars, toys and other homemade crafts for the auction, others just brought in checks.
The proceeds from the more than 800 auction items sold and the monetary donations totaled $55,783.25, Bingham said.
Missed TV coverage
She added that while not having live television coverage on the local cable channel for the first time in many years was a challenge, having the auction broadcast live on the Internet helped — despite a few glitches.
“We really missed having TV,” Bingham said.
On a few occasions this weekend, the auction’s Web site went down.
But Bingham stressed that this was the first year the auction was broadcast on the Internet, and planners will learn from this year’s effort.