Hospital News

2006 Press Releases

Antiques Show "Godmother" Leads Benefit for Breast Center.

LONG BRANCH, NJ, June 4, 2006 - Ten months of the year, the talk is focused and the mission is clear: The show will go on, and women walking through the doors of the Jacqueline M. Wilentz Comprehensive Breast Center at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch will get what they need. The 66 members of the well-oiled machine that raises dedicated funds for the breast center will see to that.

Barbara Goldfarb will see to that.

The guiding force behind the annual Two Rivers Antiques Show & Garden Tour, which has raised more than $2 million in dedicated funds for the breast center in the show's 12-year history, is a slender, attractive woman who does business with purpose and passion. An interior designer by profession and a devout philanthropist at heart, Goldfarb is a gold mine of ideas.

More importantly, this week's Asbury Park Press Hometown Hero gets things done.

When Goldfarb, a Little Silver resident, first took part in the garden show a dozen years back, she had a simple, decisive thought. "I realized I could do more," she says.

So she tapped into her strengths and figured out what the community lacked that could add not only to the fundraising efforts for the Wilentz Breast Center, but to the general education of the community: a nationally recognized antiques show featuring dealers from across the country.

How to get dozens of prominent, hard-to-snag dealers to Monmouth County didn't faze Goldfarb; she had contacts, she had powers of persuasion, she had logic on her side. She also had Gale Grossman, of Spring Lake, and Geri Skirkanich, now of Florida and Rumson, on her side, chums who chipped in with time and acumen at the show's inception.

And so the antiques portion of the now nationally acclaimed annual fundraising show again will open this Friday evening at the Red Bank Armory and continue through the weekend, the result of 10 months of hard work on the part of its "godmother and inventor," Barbara Goldfarb and the members of her show committee.

"Barbara tires me out," says Terry Ingram of Oceanport, this year's overall chair of the show. "She's got a lot of energy, and she's really dedicated. She's our CEO, really."

"She invented the show," adds Lindsey LaRocca of Rumson, who chairs the dealers' committee. "Barbara's like our godmother, our matriarch. It was her idea, her dream to have this show. She had to sell people on it, but now we have a waiting list (of dealers) to get into the show. Barbara has built it up into what it is."

The proceeds from the show funnel dedicated funds to the breast center. Indeed, says Robin Siegel, special events manager for the Monmouth Medical Center Foundation, the fundraising arm of the hospital, "It allows us to maintain excellent care, with the most up-to-date equipment. With this money, we're able to purchase cutting-edge equipment andoffer the highest standard of breast care."

Thanks to the efforts of Goldfarb and the members of her committee, "We were one of the first breast centers to have digital mammography," says Laurie MacArthur, director of development for the foundation. "That was a direct result of the antiques show's contribution. We meet with Barbara and the committee every year and tell them about the equipment we'd like to have. And Barbara and the committee make a commitment to get it for us."

This time out, there's an added enticement: an antique 1956 Thunderbird convertible, which will be for sale at the show.

"Tracy Turi got us that," says Goldfarb of the Rumson woman who long has volunteered her efforts for the show and the breast center. "It's white with a red leather interior. Mint. Classic."

Goldfarb, mind you, knows extraordinary from merely nice. Long a collector of American antiques and folk art, she was a pre-med student at Barnard College, Columbia University in New York, but "I did not go to medical school — I got interested in painting and design." While her husband, Dr. Michael Goldfarb, now the chief of surgery at Monmouth Medical Center, was at Harvard, she and her children — Greg, now 35, and Eric, 34 — took advantage of the many cultural opportunities in the Boston area.

But when the Goldfarbs moved to the Jersey Shore in 1974, Barbara Goldfarb noticed something the community lacked: an interactive children's museum.

Thus began her first fundraising effort for her new community, which resulted in the creation of the children's museum of Monmouth Museum at Brookdale Community College in Middletown.

"I created it in 1978," she says, touting the work of a pair of like-minded friends, Barbara Turner and the late Diney Goldsmith, who helped her found the museum. It's now called the Sherburn Becker Wing and is aimed at grade-schoolers. Goldfarb also worked to establish the Monmouth Museum's Wonder Wing, an interactive invention for preschool children.

Goldfarb's world always centers around people; from taking pains to name the dozens who devote time to the fundraising show ("Geri Skirkanich goes back and forth between here and Florida now, but she's been there since the beginning, just like Gale Grossman; Terry Ingram is amazing, and it couldn't be done without her; Lindsey LaRocca is a true antiques authority herself; Laurie Manzo is from Rumson, and she's always there for it") to keeping tabs on dealers and their needs to praising the efforts of the people who work at and for the breast center, the "godmother-CEO-inventor" doesn't miss a beat or a detail.

Which is how she not only thinks of what needs to be done, but sees it all through.

"Barbara Goldfarb is passionate about the breast center, a staunch supporter over the years," notes Laurie MacArthur. "She's more than generous — she's there, always there. Barbara just makes it spin."

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