Tally for Marines about $50,000 at 3rd Mess Night

Newport Beach’s annual Mess Night, a black-tie dinner held Thursday to benefit Camp Pendleton Marines’ families, may have raised more than $50,000, a city official said. More than 500 people, including about 160 Marines, attended the dinner at the Balboa Bay Club, said Dick Kurth, the city’s deputy director of administrative services and a former Marine.

In December 2003, the city adopted the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines — known as the 1/1 — and has since held three black-tie dinners and other activities to benefit the Marines’ families.

At Thursday’s event, a donation bucket was filled with close to $16,000 in “checks, cash and one IOU written on a piece of cardboard,” Kurth said. People pledged to give another $21,000, more than half of which has been received, and a little profit — about $15,000 to $20,000 — may be left over from ticket sales after expenses are paid, he said. Kurth also expects donations to continue streaming in.

All told, the city may have helped Marines and their families to the tune of $150,000 or so in the last three years.

But there’s another reason for Mess Night besides the cash, Kurth said.

“It’s also an opportunity for the members of the community to mix with real, live, active-duty Marines and for the Marines to mix with them,” he said.

— Alicia Robinson