South Orange County native and musician Andrew McMahon and his Dear Jack Foundation are hosting a benefit dinner at the Ecology Center on Saturday, Aug. 5.
The family-style, farm-to-table feast will include courses made from scratch with farm-grown ingredients and crafted libations. The intimate dinner will be capped at 72 guests, who will be able to engage in conversations with one another and with McMahon and his Dear Jack Foundation community, which supports young adult cancer patients and survivors.
Tickets are $300 per person and all of the net proceeds go directly to the foundation and the patients it serves. Tickets can be purchased directly at theecologycenter.org.
McMahon started the foundation in 2006, a year after he had been diagnosed and successfully treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia via a life-saving stem cell transplant, with his donor match being his own sister, Katie.
He’s hosted numerous benefit concerts through the years with his various bands including Jack’s Mannequin, Something Corporate and Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness to raise money for the Dear Jack Foundation’s programs.
The foundation provides one-on-one patient support and wellness programs and offers family support. In the past, McMahon has teamed up with organizations like the Love Hope Strength Foundation to get his fanbase to become part of the national bone marrow registry. In 2016, McMahon said that about 6,000 of his fans had signed up and done a cheek swab to become a potential donor for those with blood cancers. Of those fans, 66 were told they were a match for a cancer patient in need and 16 of those went on to donate their cells to give a cancer patient a second shot at life.
“I get chills when I talk about that,” he said during a 2016 interview. “I think, like any patient or survivor, you try to find ways to make what you went through have meaning and for some people that comes more easily than others. For me, it took some time to figure out…
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