Gatsby in the Garden

The champagne will flow under the stars as the Victory Board presents the 48th Annual Gala “Gatsby in the Garden” benefiting the American Cancer Society on November 11th at six o’clock in the evening. The 2017 co-chairs hope to take you back in time to experience Gatsby’s extravagance for an entertaining party. Gatsby’s infinite hope has inspired us as we hope to inspire you during this evening of raising money to one day find a cure.

The affair will take place at The Greenhouse, The Vine’s new event space on St. Simons Island. As guests step through the entrance, terrarium luminaries will help to guide them by candlelight into the garden of The Greenhouse. Each terrarium will be personalized with the names of loved ones and friends whose lives have been affected by cancer. Guests will enjoy hors d’oeuvres and cocktails as they amble through the silent auction offering objects and experiences that would impress any of Gatsby’s guests. Some of the items they will be bidding on include beautifully crafted jewelry, a selection of local art, and a variety of sporting event packages.

Chef Dave Snyder and his team from Halyards are joining Victory Board once again this year to provide a lavish spread of delicious food for the evening. The local fare will include a wide variety to satisfy every individual’s tastes.

The Master of Ceremonies, former mayor, Bryan Thompson, will begin the live auction after dinner. A custom-made piece donated by Chadwick’s Jewelers and A Culinary Experience in Sea Island’s Wine Cellar for 10 guests are just two of the items which will entice guests to bid. There will also be a drawing for the very popular wine raffle.

After dinner, the evening is not over because the grand finale will include live music and dancing featuring local favorites Mason Waters and the Groove Allstars. So, don your Roaring Twenties best and get ready to dance the Charleston! (continues)

Today, The Great Gatsby, is considered to be F. Scott Fitzgerald’s finest work. This cautionary tale about the American Dream painted a vivid picture of the Jazz Age and Roaring Twenties through the lavish lifestyle of mysterious young millionaire Jay Gatsby and his contemporaries in the fictional town of West Egg on Long Island in 1922. There has been a resurgence in interest in that

glittering era and the novel, including a 2013 movie remake starring Leonardo DiCaprio, but, it might surprise you to know that what is now considered an American literary classic did not always have such popularity.

At the time of its release in 1925, Gatsby was not a commercial success like Fitzgerald’s previous books had been and critics called it a dud. Only 20,000 copies of the book were sold in the entire first year of publication. When Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at age 44 in 1940, the publisher still had copies of the book in its warehouse from a second printing of only 3,000 books, and many said the promise of a brilliant career he had shown was unrealized. However, in 1945, a wartime experiment unquestionably saved the book from obscurity and brought a popularity to Fitzgerald’s Great American Novel that even he could never have dreamed.

One year into the United States’ involvement in World War II, a group of book-loving authors, librarians, and publishers founded the Council on Books in Wartime, wanting to promote titles that would maintain the country’s morale. They contended books were “weapons in the war of ideas.” In February 1943, they undertook an ambitious effort to ship books to soldiers overseas. The program was perfectly timed with the newest innovation in publishing: paperbacks. Printed on magazine presses, it only cost 6 cents a copy to make a small book that fit neatly into a soldier’s fatigue pocket. The first batch of Armed Services Edition (ASE) books were shipped to U.S. Army and Navy troops that July. The result? Bored and homesick servicemen and women devoured the novels with the same enthusiasm as chocolate and pin-up girl photos. Many soldiers readily admitted these were the first books they had read outside of a classroom. Before the D-Day invasion, commanders made sure every soldier had a book before setting sail for Normandy.

The council distributed 123 million free copies of 1,227 titles. The Great Gatsby was printed as an ASE in October 1945, with 155,000 copies distributed – dwarfing the novel’s numbers in two decades of sales. Although this was after Germany and Japan had surrendered, that timing only helped its popularity. More than 1.5 million servicemembers were still stationed overseas two years after the war ended, and they were more bored and homesick than ever. The sparkling opulence of Gatsby’s world and sense of longing for something out of reach were a perfect escape and still a sense of connection for American soldiers. Because soldiers passed the ASE books around, it’s estimated that each copy was read about 7 times – meaning Fitzgerald’s Great American Novel was read by more than one million soldiers. That is an audience beyond his wildest dreams.

The interest sparked by the military program spread to a wider, general audience. These new readers and the generations that have since followed recognize the value of Fitzgerald’s novel for what his contemporary critics could not have appreciated at the time – it colorfully captured that bygone Roaring Twenties era in way few others have ever done. By 1961, The Great Gatsby was being printed for high school classrooms. Today, the book is regarded as a classic in American literature and sells nearly a half million copies each year. Thanks to the men and women who served America in World War II, Gatsby earned its title of “Great.”

Tickets are $150 per person and are available online at acsvictoryboard.org or by calling 912.355.1378. The Keepsake Terrarium Luminaries can also be purchased for $25 in memory or in honor of someone impacted by cancer.