Golf event raises funds for cancer research

Austin residents teeing off to support cancer research couldn’t have asked for better conditions.

Sunny weather welcomed in the 15th annual Karl Potach Memorial Golf Tournament Monday afternoon at the Austin Country Club. The event started with a golf clinic led by Austin native Jon Chaffee, followed by golfing, dinner and an auction. About 160 golfers took to the course, and more than 250 came for the dinner and auction.

“It went extremely well,” said Dr. Kurt Potach, father of Karl Potach. “We had, if not our biggest tournament, one of our biggest.”

The tournament, which The Hormel Institute has assisted the Karl R. Potach Foundation in putting on since 2008, funds research on Wilms’ tumor, a rare type of pediatric cancer. Leading up to this year’s tournament, the Potach Foundation had already donated $161,800 to The Institute.

Karl Potach succumbed to cancer in 1997 at the age of 4. The Potach family has since raised almost half a million dollars for cancer research, according to Todd Hepler, store director at the Austin Hy-Vee.

Between this year’s fundraiser at Austin Hy-Vee and the event itself, Gail Dennison, director of public relations and development with The Hormel Institute, said $75,000 were raised. Of that amount, $55,000 went to the Hormel Institute, $10,000 to the Children’s Cancer Research Fund at the University of Minnesota and $10,000 to the Mayo Clinic Pediatric Research Department in Rochester.

“It just means an awful lot to us,” said Kurt, adding his thanks for all those who supported the fundraiser.

“The Hormel Institute is deeply grateful to the Karl R. Potach Foundation, the Potach family and all of their volunteers — in particular, Lance and Snow Pogones, who started the tournament — who worked so hard on the fundraiser,” Dennison said earlier this month.

Speaker Jeff Reinartz spoke during the banquet about his and his wife Jennifer’s experience when their 2-year-old daughter suffered a similar form of cancer to Karl. Josie is now 13 and doing well.

Fundraising efforts this year started in the beginning of August at Austin Hy-Vee, where employees wore and sold butterfly shirts to promote the Potach Foundation’s cause. That fundraiser continued up until the golf tournament, and now part of the proceeds will go to The Hormel Institute, with the other parts going toward the Mayo Clinic’s Pediatric Cancer Research and the University of Minnesota’s Children’s Cancer Research Fund.

“Hy-Vee has been part of the tournament since the very beginning,” Hepler said earlier this month, adding the grocer has provided supplies and food to support the tournament in previous years.

According to the Karl R. Potach Foundation’s website, butterflies symbolize the end of Karl’s struggle against cancer. In his final weeks, he kept two cocoons in a jar and watched as butterflies emerged and flew away. The day before he passed, Karl told his grandmother he would soon be a butterfly as well.