Press Release:
The Braham Area Education Foundation is gearing up for another special celebration of
Braham’s history and its future, with its Fifth Annual Spring Gala on April 15th at the beautiful Braham Event Center. The event will include live musical entertainment from Braham students, a live and silent auction, and a special keynote address from Broadcaster and Braham Graduate Jim Erickson. The Gala will also include recognition of the current members of the Braham Hall of Fame, along with the induction of its newest members.
Jim Erickson is a 1988 graduate of Braham, and a graduate of the Brown Institute School of Broadcasting. Jim began his radio career in 1989 as a morning show host and sports play-by-play announcer at WCMP radio in Pine City. Jim later spent two stints with BOB FM Radio in the Twin Cities, and currently is the host of BOB FM’s Morning Show and All Request Lunch Hour. Jim also spent a combined four seasons working in minor league hockey from 2004 to 2008, as the play-by-play announcer and director of media relations with the Memphis RiverKings of the Central Hockey League and the Iowa Stars of the American Hockey League. Jim was voted “Best Broadcaster” and “Broadcaster of the Year” following the 2006-07 Central Hockey League season. More recently, Jim has been the television play-by-play voice for various Minnesota Prep Bowl High School Football games since 2010, and since 2015 he has been the television play-by-play voice for all 14 games of the Class A and AA Minnesota State Boys High School Hockey Tournament. Jim also handled the play-by-play duties for Minnesota’s Class A state tournament hockey games from 2012 to 2014, and for the Class A and AA Minnesota State Girls High School Hockey Tournament from 2014 to 2016. Since 2016, Jim has also served as the radio play-by-play voice for St. Cloud State Men’s Hockey. Jim and his wife Chrissy reside in Otsego, Minnesota.
Tickets to the Gala, which will begin with a social hour at 5:30 p.m. and will include dinner
beginning at approximately 6:30 p.m., are $50, and are available for purchase from individual advisory board members, and at the Braham Area High School Superintendent’s Office at the Braham Area High School. For contributors purchasing eight tickets for $400, a full table will be reserved in your name, or in the name of your company or organization. In addition, if you would like to serve as a named sponsor of the event, you can serve as a Platinum sponsor with a $5,000 contribution, a Gold sponsor with a $3,000 contribution, a Silver sponsor with a $1,500 contribution, and a Bronze sponsor with a $750 contribution. Finally, supporters of Braham’s students can also contribute at any time by making a tax-deductible contribution online at www.givemn.org/story/Baef, or by sending a check written to the Initiative Foundation, with Braham Area Education Foundation in the memo line, to P.O. Box 571, Braham, Minnesota55006.
The Braham Area Education Foundation officially launched in August of 2017, after more than a year of planning and community engagement. The mission of the foundation is to provide Independent School District #314 with enhanced educational opportunities and resources, support academic excellence, and encourage student achievement. The foundation’s volunteer board is working to fulfill that mission in partnership with the Initiative Foundation, a regional non-profit organization with a long history of supporting community development throughout east central Minnesota. Thanks to the contributions of dozens of local businesses and hundreds of friends of education in Braham, the Foundation’s endowment surpassed $290,000 in early 2023, and will be a continuing source of support for Braham’s students long into the future. In the first years of that journey, the foundation has distributed dozens of grants totaling more than $35,000 since late 2018, all to support innovative learning opportunities that extend beyond the reach of the school district’s budget.
