WHITTIER — More than 100 golfers gathered at California Country Club earlier this month to raise funds for the Blind Childrens Center, a Los Angeles based agency that serves children from birth to elementary school age with visual impairments, helping them acquire skills and build their independence.

The 18th annual Roddy Hiatt Golf Tournament draws golfers from throughout the area. From humble beginnings, the tournament has grown to the point it regularly raises around $40,000 a year for the Blind Childrens Center, or “the kids,” as Hiatt and many of the people affiliated with the tournament say.

Hiatt, the new football coach at Salesian High School in Boyle Heights, first learned about the Blind Childrens Center when he was coaching the Los Angeles Centurions, the Los Angeles Police Department’s football team.

The center was the charity the Centurions donated any proceeds from ticket sales or concessions to.

A few years later, Hiatt was tending bar at the Pico Rivera Municipal Golf Course and the subject of conversation somehow turned to the Blind Childrens Center.

“Somehow we decided to throw our own tournament for the center,” Hiatt said. “We had it at Pico and raised a whole $248 that first year.”

To say it has taken off since then is an understatement. Over the years the tournament has moved from Pico Rivera to the Montebello Golf Course before ending up at California Country Club six years ago.

Hiatt leads a committee that plans the tournament each year, making a day on the golf course enjoyable to the players, many of whom have been participating for years.

Hiatt singled out the men’s golf club at Los Amigos Country Club in Downey as one of the longtime supporters of the tournament.

“Every year, the club’s first tournament of the year in January, they charge players an extra $15 and they give that to us,” Hiatt said. “It serves as the seed money for us to get started every year.”

The club’s donation was around $2,000 this year, he said.

Golfers receive a goodie bag which includes a commemorative golf shirt, a breakfast spread that includes menudo and burritos, chilled beverages and carne asada and chicken tacos out on the course, and a luncheon following the round of golf that concludes with a drawing in which prizes ranging from golf caps to big screen televisions, trips to Catalina, and Dodgers and Angels tickets are given away.

The Laker Girls have made appearances at several of the tournaments but they were unable to attend this year.

At the luncheon each year, Midge Horton, executive director of the Blind Childrens Center, explains how the center teaches blind and visually impaired youngsters Braille, how to walk with a cane and other things they will need to know before they move into a regular educational setting.

This year Horton talked about the center’s expansion plans that is adding classrooms so the center can serve youngsters up to the third grade.

Prior to 2006, the center only served children up to 4 years old. That year it added a kindergarten program and a parent of one of the youngsters in kindergarten asked if the program could be expanded the next year to first graders.

Horton introduced that parent, Liz Flores, and her 6-year-old daughter Jennifer, who has been attending the center since she was 7 months old, at the luncheon. Liz Flores thanked the golfers for their contributions to the center’s expansion program.

Also speaking at the luncheon was young actor Denzel Whitaker, who starred in “The Great Debaters” and also appeared with Denzel Washington, who he was named after, in “Training Day.”

Whitaker, 19, who golfed in the tournament with his father Dale (a tournament regular), told about playing a blind youth in a yet-to-be-released movie directed by Wes Craven. To prepare for the role, he blindfolded himself at home and tried to do normal, every day tasks.

“You don’t know how blessed you are to be able to see,” he told the crowd of golfers, impressing many with his off-the-cuff speaking ability and his poised-beyond-his-years manner.

At the end of the day, Hiatt was happy with this year’s event. Despite the down economy, the tournament field was almost full and with the final sponsors checks still coming in, he said the tournament was right near its annual goal of $40,000, which would put the overall amount raised in 18 years to nearly $400,000.

“Not bad from a start of $248,” he said.