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Boone Center for the Family Celebrates Savvy Chic IV 

Approximately 250 guests gathered at the Beverly Hills Hotel Wednesday, Nov. 7, for Savvy Chic IV, Pepperdine’s fourth annual fall fashion-show fundraiser in support of the Pat and Shirley Boone Center for the Family at the Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education and Psychology. Emmy-winning fashion designer Brenda Cooper served as emcee while Pepperdine volunteer models (including two mother-daughter duos) strode the runway alongside the pros.

The festive lunchtime event serves as an annual guidepost for the Boone Center, an outreach of GSEP dedicated to promoting healthy marriages and strong families. Dennis Lowe, professor of psychology and founding director of the center, shared the successes of the past year’s work, including conducting family retreats, radio and television interviews and appearances, and training couples as specialists to work as relationship mentors. Thanks to the generosity of its sponsors, attendees, and friends (not to mention proceeds from some hotly contested silent auctions and raffles), Savvy Chic has so far raised $200,000 in support of the Boone Center mission.

Each year at Savvy Chic the Boone Center takes the opportunity bestow its Friends of the Family Award on a couple who exemplify a commitment to encouraging the growth of healthy families and family life. The 2007 honorees were Pepperdine regent and former U.S. ambassador to Jamaica and his wife, the Honorable Glen and Mrs. Gloria Holden, who themselves have three children and eight grandchildren. The Holdens received a silver loving cup to commemorate the occasion, engraved with Ambassador Holden’s counsel both to his own and to all families: “Dream big, be charitable and thoughtful to others. Live a purposeful life, with family at heart.”

For more information on Savvy Chic and the Boone Center for the Family, please visit the center's Web site.