ALPINE, N.J.—On April 11, the Englewood Health Foundation Breakfast Club hosted another outstanding brunch. This spring event had 150 attendees and was held at the Alpine Country Club. It featured Cate Holahan, the best-selling novelist of “The Widower’s Wife,” “Lies She Told” and “Dark Turns.” She also has another novel due to be published this year, titled “One Little Secret.”
Besides her forays into fiction, Holahan is also an award-winning journalist whose work has been featured in Business Week, the Boston Globe, CBS.com, MSN.com and other publications. She has also served as a producer for CNBC’s “Fast Money.”
Proceeds from the event benefit The Englewood Health Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that develops private resources to support the capital, endowment and annual-operating needs of Englewood Health. Established in 1995, the Foundation has raised in excess of $100 million via capital campaigns, special events and annual giving opportunities.
This year’s event began with a raffle and a sumptuous brunch buffet where guests mingled with Englewood Health staff and Breakfast Club Committee members in attendance: Lyndsley Capuano, Suellen Freeman, Beth Nadel, Carol Rubin, Erica Park, Allison Di Staulo, Jennifer LaFrieda, Jeanine Casty, Dr. Ulrike Berth and Lisa Spivack.
Spring Breakfast Chair Capuano welcomed everyone and introduced Jay Nadel, chairman of the board of the Englewood Health Foundation, who began the program with an upbeat and inspiring speech.
“I have said this before, and I will say it again—The Breakfast Club never ceases to amaze me,” Nadel said. “For nearly a decade, this small but mighty group has expertly organized one successful event after another and helped the foundation to establish a growing network of friends interested in supporting Englewood Health.”
Nadel acknowledged his fellow trustees in attendance and the event sponsors: Northern Center for Plastic Surgery, Town Audi, Town Porsche and Subaru of Englewood.
Nadel announced that the proceeds from the spring brunch would support Heel the Soul, a program at Englewood Health that provides support for women battling serious disease. He then introduced Sherri Ozawa, RN, senior director of patient and family engagement, who spoke. Ozawa is also the hospital’s clinical director of The Institute for Patient Blood Management and Bloodless Medicine and Surgery, and president-elect of the Society for the Advancement of Blood Management.
Ozawa praised the work that Heel the Soul has done since it was founded five years ago by Joanne Ehrlich. Heel the Soul has grown and expanded from its original mission to support cancer patients and now offers support and comfort to all women battling serious illness at Englewood Health. Patients receive bags with a blanket, slippers, a water bottle for hydration during treatment, cosmetics, gift cards for services at the Graf Center for Integrative Medicine and gift cards to the hospital’s Drapkin Cafe. They are also given transportation assistance to and from the hospital.
Heel the Soul is fully funded, year after year, by the generosity of donors.
Capuano then introduced the featured speaker, Holahan, who spoke about her journey to becoming a writer. She related that she wrote for The Record in its high school internship program when she was 15 years old and a student at Teaneck High School.
“I wrote about the best places to go in the singles column,” she said.
After high school, Holahan attended Princeton as a political science major (“because they didn’t have a journalism major”). She then wrote about how Napster was changing the youth culture, and earned an award for her piece.
When she graduated college in 2002, Holahan wrote a story about how funds were being mismanaged in a local town, and that led to her writing features about technology and business for the Boston Globe and Business Week.
“I talked to Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson and I interviewed Elon Musk for CNBC, where I worked behind the scenes as a producer.
With the upcoming birth of her second child, Holahan decided to leave CNBC and work at home writing fiction books, something she had always wanted to do.
“I have always been passionate about writing. My father was a journalist for Aviation International News and I worked for him when I was 13.
Holahan advised that to be a successful writer, you have to do research to make your work feel authentic.
“For the book, ‘Dark Turns,’ which is reminiscent of the movie ‘Black Swan,’ I took ballet classes at a school in Edgewater and I also interviewed professional ballerinas,” she said. “For a novel with a female detective, I interviewed a female detective, and for a story about Bernie Madoff, I interviewed an elderly lady who had lost her life savings to his Ponzi scheme.”
When asked why she chooses to write crime fiction, Holahan said, “Because, I can control the universe in my story. I try to show the mind of the criminal and I can make sure that justice is done.”
Following Holahan’s talk, there was a question-and-answer session, and then Nadel, Freeman and Rubin, co-chairs of the Breakfast Club, presented Holahan with a gift—a beautiful, engraved silver picture frame.
The morning ended with the announcement of winners of the raffle. Prizes included a certificate to jumaFit in Tenafly, four tickets to the Yankees/Mets Subway Series plus a gift certificate to Chophouse in Citi Field, and two tickets to the Englewood Health Foundation’s 2019 Gala, The Best of Times, on May 4, 2019.