An Evening with Champions
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An Evening with Champions is an annual benefit figure skating show hosted by Eliot House of Harvard University. The event is a two-day skating show in October, which regularly attracts world-class skaters, thousands of spectators, hundreds of Harvard students, special guests, donors, and of course the children for whom the event is for. The show is entirely student-run and is managed completely by volunteer work.
The show was originally conceived in 1970 by John Misha Petkevich, the two-time Olympic competitor who was at that time a junior at Harvard living in Eliot House.
Many current and former U.S. and international champions and Olympic competitors have appeared in the show over the years. The show usually features a mix of up-and-coming elite competitors and established champions. Past years' skaters have included Michelle Kwan, Brian Boitano, Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi, and Ekaterina Gordeeva. Paul Wylie, himself a former resident of Eliot House, has usually hosted the show in recent years. Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov have also had a particularly long association with the show, and continue to make annual appearances.
All profits go to the Jimmy Fund, one of New England's most cherished charities. The Jimmy Fund is dedicated to pediatric cancer research and treatment, and the affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has similar important goals. The show has been around since 1970, and in that time it has raised over $2.25 million for the Jimmy Fund.
The show was formerly televised each year on PBS, but the broadcast lost its corporate sponsorship in 2001. More recently, it has been televised on the Comcast Network cable channel CN8.
[edit] Embezzlement scandal
Chas Lee pleaded guilty to charges of embezzling over $100,000 from the show in 1991 and 1992, when he was co-chairman of the event as an Eliot House undergraduate. David Sword, another Harvard undergraduate who served as the event's treasurer around the same time, was also convicted of embezzling a lesser amount of money. The scandal received a considerable amount of press coverage in the Boston area at the time the theft was uncovered in 1994.
