Scott Guirlinger

The Man behind the Ghent Bar Tours

Scott Guirlinger’s first experience with the Make-A-Wish Foundation® took place at age 11 when his cousin Valerie was granted a wish by the Make-A-Wish Foundation® of Michigan. As a 14-year-old girl who loved soap operas, she wished for and received a big screen TV for her family's basement. She was also one of two featured kids on the Children's Miracle Network Telethon in western Michigan that year. Scott and his entire extended family were on television with Valerie at the final announcement ceremony - it's a day none of them will ever forget.

Scott later lost his cousin but kept with him the idea of the power a wish can hold. He became a volunteer wish granter with the Mid-Atlantic Make-A-Wish Foundation® while living in Baltimore, MD. He was fortunate enough to grant several wishes for children in the Baltimore area, ranging from a shopping spree at Arundel Mills to a trip to Disney World to a wheelchair ramp for a family who had previously been manually carrying their child in his wheelchair up their front steps every day.

Shortly after moving to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, Scott contacted the Make-A-Wish Foundation® of Eastern Virginia to become a wish granter in the local area. At the volunteer training session, he posed a simple question to the staff wondering if he were to run an event (the 2006 Ghent Winter Bar Tour) with some friends in the neighborhood where he lived to raise money for a good cause would the organization like to be the beneficiary. Naturally they said yes and a meeting was arranged between Scott and the staff's Director of Development.

Pitching a drinking event to a non-profit organization can be a touchy subject and Scott was cautious as he described what he and his friends had in mind. Specials, wristbands, T-shirts, and other items were discussed. But it wasn't long before the director came out and finally asked "Scott, are you talking about doing a pub crawl?" To which the reply quickly came "Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about." And the rest, as they say, is history.