Thank you for your generous donations
Dear Friends and Family of Matt Lufrano,
I met Matt about twenty years ago when my sister, Sara, married his brother, Chris. We both MC’ed their wedding at the hotel that is now the Kahala Hotel. Matt of course stole the show and I was more of a side-kick than a co-presenter. I know his jokes received more laughs and his stories brought out more emotion than mine. While we did not spend much time together since the wedding, I like to think that we were good friends, if not brothers. When I first heard about what happened to Matt at Kailua Beach on August 31, 2013, I, like most of you, was distraught. How could someone so young (my age) have this happen after he had moved to Hawaii with his young family just a month ago? The following week, I stopped by the hospital each day to try and show my support. I wanted to do something to help his loved ones and family. I felt, however, that my hands were tied and there was nothing that I could do to change fate. When he passed on September 8, I decided to create these web pages with the help of some great people. This is my first time doing anything like this, so if there is anything that I said in the pages that could have been said better, or something that I could have done better, I take sole responsibility for the error and I welcome any comments or corrections. My goal in setting these pages was to first create a forum for all of Matt’s loved ones to connect and share stories of Matt. I can’t take credit, because without sending out a single message, the facebook page spontaneously received over 600 likes and multiple posts in the first 24 hours. This was also notwithstanding that I initially mistyped “wiss” for “miss” in the name of the page. The only reason so many have been attracted to this page is because Matt had the innate ability to bring people together and was deeply loved by everyone he touched. My second goal is to raise money for his wife, Suzin, and daughters Emily Ryan and Anabella Nicole. With the help of some good friends, we made mattlufrano.weebly.com. While there are other fundraising web pages out there, I did not want to use them because they charge between 4-5% of the donations in addition to the paypal fees. So instead, we created our own web page to eliminate having to pay this additional fee. Donations made on mattlufrano.weebly.com go straight to Suzin and the kids. The only charges are the paypal processing charges of 2.9% per transaction. While I may not know many of you, I hope you will join me in attaining my goal of raising money for Matt’s family to assist them. Please donate whatever you feel comfortable and share these web pages with as many people as you can. Thank you, Mike Carroll |