Fireman’s Ball: a place to be seen
Ketchum-style glamour, edgy conversation; even Millennium Man and
Dreamshot show up
By DANA DUGAN
Bear with
me. I’m in recovery thanks to spending Saturday night at the 20th annual
Fireman’s Ball.
Held at the Sun Valley Inn’s Limelight Room, the ball is the
Ketchum/Sun Valley Volunteer Fire Department’s biggest fund-raiser.
The fire department maintains a "Burn Out Fund" into which
the money raised at the ball goes. The fund aids those "who may have been struck by a
tragedy, lost everything in a fire or were hurt badly in some accident," said
volunteer fireman Matt Colesworthy.
One year the fund provided children’s car seats to Moritz
Community Hospital, which then donated them to families in need. Educational programs may
also be funded.
The fund
has also bought new equipment, including an engine at the Griffin Butte fire station and a
mobile command unit.
Those are the facts, ma’am; now for the party.
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Kicking off the holiday season, participants were clearly eager to
dress up, mingle and dance. There was a tangible feeling of giddy excitement in the
gathering.
For the most part, women were attired in basic long black dresses.
Ketchum-style glamour pervaded. More ties were seen here than since the last insurance
convention.
James Manfull wore a delightful vintage bow tie, and was accompanied by
his friend Ty from New York, chic in black-on-black, who had this to say about the ball:
"It takes me to the edge of social partying and pushes me off."
Whoa.
Keith, from Surefoot, dapper in gray suit and a colorful ‘40s tie,
was worrying about the lighting. "Its sort of dark in here," he said.
Katherine Hughes shimmered in a long gold sheath. Mary Poppen sparkled
in a short Chinese satin dress with fashionable black shrug.
Birthday
girl, actress and children’s book illustrator Anna Senechal glowed as she scanned the
crowd. "I’m seeing so many people I know," she gushed. "The energy is
terrific."
Also spotted in the crowd were plenty of the emergency contingency
crew. Shift Captain Ron Parsons was cutting the rug with Julie Roos, followed by a beaming
Mr. and Mrs. Matt "Sparky" Colesworthy. Also holding forth was Doug Wynn from
the Sheriff’s work program, naturopath Scott Freeborn and, in case of any dance
misalignments, chiropractor Dean Rutherford, wearing a glow stick around his neck.
Okay, there’s a guy I never met. Check out this outfit: under a
head of shocking white hair, there’s a red velvet smoking jacket, black leather pants
and zebra striped shoes.
Two guys, calling themselves Millennium Man (they call me
"MM") and Dreamshot, regaled this reporter with balderdash about how they’d
been at the ball for three hours already. Didn’t buy their story since they seemed
quite natty still.
By midnight, the party was beginning to peak, the floor was packed with
dancers groovin’ to the mellow sounds of Amber Marie and her band from Montana. Of
course, this was a crowd that also boogied to the BeeGees piped in during the band’s
breaks.
Apparently, according to an anonymous source, there were grumblings
from irritated local musicians (not with the band), that if Amber Marie sang the theme
song from "Titanic" one more time, they’d storm the stage and commandeer
the instruments for their own purposes.
More sightings included MB Cooper and Dave Brocklebank, Sam Slater,
Dale Bates, swingin’ as usual, Ketchum Seafood Jarod, looking rakish in vintage suit
and tie, swinging brothers Steve and Chris O’Donnell, Scott’s Larry Morton,
Tracey Smith in vintage ‘50s dress, Matt Gorby in baseball cap, natch.
Also, teacher extrordinaire Joan Melton; publisher of Local Favorites,
Chuck Mercer; Amy Taylor, delightful in fabulous gray sweater with faux fur collar;
newlyweds Eric Rogers and Eleanor Jewett; and David Uptmor, sometime assistant to
Bond-films’ plane dude.
The latter tried to amuse with a Lewinsky, Kazinski, Clinton limerick
(you figure it out), but was more helpful in describing the playful items on the tables
around the Limelight room.
Besides
bouquets of colorful balloons, there were little spinner tops and yo-yos, pinball games
and Groucho masks. And don’t forget the crayons so you can write on the tables.
Problem. The paper didn’t always cover the tables. No problem. Some people wrote on
the table cloths.
As for later that night when the party moved en masse to Whiskey
Jacques’, the reggae band swept the few remaining cobwebs from the senses and had the
folks dancing and generally getting down.
Anna Senechal’s quote bears repeating: "The energy is
terrific."
