Our 7th annual charity dinner was a huge success. First, I want to thank all of you that had the opportunity and took the time to join us at this event. I think it’s my favorite FATC event of the year. Second, thanks to so many of you that said such nice things afterward about the fellowship and great time that you had on this special night. Remember, YOU make this fellowship what it is!! And third, a big thank you to our sponsors for their awesome raffle items and to the Falls Golf club for doing a superb job with the food, setting up the venue and for just taking good care of us all evening.
We had 68 men sign up for the dinner and with the bad flu season that we have been having I was amazed we only had three no shows because of sickness. Many knew the drill and immediately bought their raffle tickets before dinner was served. We set a record this year thanks to all of you, bringing in over $4500 for our three charities. We went over the year (2017) in review and it amazes me how many things we, as a fellowship, have accomplished. Our awards for 2017 went out to three very deserving individuals. Jim Craig won the “Lew Smith Spirit of Fly Fishing” award while Gary Elliott received the “Bob Chott Servant’s Heart” award. A special award was presented to Mike Bisaga for his extraordinary work he had done for the fellowship in 2017 with leading our Stream Team, Scouting Mentoring program, the Taneycomo campers but most importantly for the many hours that he worked on building our new web site. Mike received the “Chairman’s Going Above and Beyond” award.
Our guest speakers this night were Wes Swee, the Maramec Spring hatchery manager and Jen Girondo, the St Louis region fisheries biologist. They gave an awesome presentation and question & answer period. We got a lot of ‘trout’ questions answered this night! Patrick Gallagher won the prize for donating the most money to our raffle and our ‘first thirty’ raffle, for the first thirty guys who signed up for dinner, had seven winners. Our big raffle was accomplished last and we had 17 items worth anywhere from $150 to $450. Awesome! Thanks to Jen for pulling the winning tickets for us!!
Again, thanks to all who made this event possible. Enjoy the pictures!
