Poster Sale To Raise Funds For Teen Center

College and high school students often spend $10 for a movie poster to decorate their bedroom or to cover up the bare walls of a new dorm - but thanks to an unusual donation, a Howell organization will be offering the same posters for $2 apiece.

"A gentleman walked into our building one day and said, 'I've got some movie posters. Would you like them?' " said Deborah Mikula, director of the Howell Area Parks and Recreation Authority. "We had no clue as to how many he had. By the time we finished, we had over 2,000 posters."

According to Mikula, the mysterious donor was moving somewhere far away and donated the posters as part of cleaning out his storage and getting rid of his possessions.

"He tried to give us more stuff out of his storage unit, but we were like, 'We're not the Salvation Army,' " Mikula said.

A poster sale, which is being held at the Bennett Recreation Center, 925 W. Grand River Ave. in Howell, will feature full-size color posters and smaller movie-promotion cards, which are about the size of a sheet of paper. All proceeds from the sale will go to the authority's Howell Teen Center, located inside the Barnard Community Center at 415 N. Barnard St.

Teenagers at the teen center inventoried the posters and got them ready for the sale before the center closed for the summer. Posters for sale include Disney and Pixar classics like "The Little Mermaid" and "Ratatouille" and critically acclaimed movies like "Pan's Labyrinth" and "The Queen."

"We'll hang some of the posters on the walls, just to give people an idea about what we're selling, but they're going to have to go through and figure out which ones they want," Mikula said.

The anonymous donor was adamant that his poster collection benefit a community organization, a request Mikula was happy to fulfill.

"We were happy to take the posters off his hands, and the money is going to a good cause," she said.

July 14, 2010