New Experience Celebration gala benefits domestic violence survivors
In 1993, when she was just 23 years old, Dawn Williams was beaten so severely that she was rendered unconscious and left for dead. The fractures and bruises inflicted by her then-boyfriend eventually healed, but the pain they caused was nothing compared to the hurt that followed.
“The pain that came afterward was the worst,” Williams recalled at the second annual New Experience Celebration, a gala benefiting the Rose Andom Center. She said she escaped that relationship with “a broken face, a broken arm and a broken soul.”
Williams, now happily married to a man who also had experienced domestic violence in a previous relationship, chaired the event held at the venue she manages, Seawell Ballroom in the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.
She later described the fundraiser as an event that “was more than I ever could have imagined.”
“So much generosity. So much love. So much compassion,” Williams said.
The 450 guests raised “a ton of money” for the Rose Andom Center, Colorado’s first Family Justice Center, a “one-stop shop, a single safe location” where survivors of domestic violence can connect with some 25 Denver-area agencies that provide legal, counseling, advocacy and shelter services, as well as programs that better equip them to become self-sufficient, such as job search, debt management and financial literacy.
The center is one of the nation’s 80 Family Justice Centers. It opened in 2016 as a public-private partnership between community organizations and local government agencies dealing with domestic violence.
Rose Andom, for whom it is named, is a former Mcdonald’s franchise operator whose childhood exposure to domestic violence led to her commitment to helping others. Funding for the center’s construction began with her gift of $1 million; since then, she has given $600,000 more.
“I went through what these ladies went through,” Andom said, referring to the 2,600 survivors who found help there in 2017. As a child, she witnessed her father abusing her mother, at one point holding a gun to her head and threatening to kill her.
Maggie Morrissey, chair of the Rose Andom Center board, was joined by her husband, former Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey, in presenting the 2018 Maggie & Mitch Morrissey Community Leadership Award to the Denver Broncos Football Club. It was accepted by president/ceo Joe Ellis.
“The Broncos became our partners even before construction began,” Maggie Morrissey said. “Their involvement has been exceptional.”
The New Experience Celebration began with cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, music by Kenny Lee Young, and silent auction bidding in the lobby of the Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex. After dinner and the program in a Seawell Ballroom that Eclectic Hive had decked out in fresh flowers and twinkling lights, the night owls in the crowd stayed on to dance to tunes spun by DJ K-NEE.
Margaret Abrams, the center’s executive director, helped Williams and the Morrisseys welcome such supporters as Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman; state Reps. Leslie Herod and Paul Rosenthal; Denver City Council president Albus Brooks; Denver District Attorney Beth Mccann; Mardi and Brown Cannon; Sharon and Dr. Donald Ferlic; Denver City Attorney Kristin Bronson; philanthropist Joanne Posnermayer; KK and Floyd Ciruli; Robin and Cole Finegan; jewelry designer Andrea Li and hubby Kris Collins; and artist William Matthews with his wife, Laura Barton.