I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their hard work, devotion and time taken to bring the derby together over the last 5 years. During each year of preparing for this Derby, I was going through the worst things I have ever had to do... keeping Robbie’s memory alive is and will always be my driving force!
2006 was the last year for “Robbie’s Derby”. I cannot take the pressure that the Derby brings each year and it gets harder each time to deal with, on top of what I have to live with daily. I thought as a community that everyone would pull together to help us make this a much bigger event! If it had not been for all of you, your families, friends and our loyal fishermen, we would not have gotten this far!!!
The “CVC” and the staff at “Island Lake Conservation Area” have been the heart of this. Without them providing everything we needed, this derby would have never happened. We also wouldn’t have founded and awarded students each year with “The Dragonfly Scholarship Award”. It has been really rewarding for me to work with those who also share the very same dreams and love for the outdoors as Robbie did.
To those of you that never met my son, and those of you that did know him, I thank you for taking the time to care about him and our dream... A time will come when all will be forgotten, but we won’t forget “The Robbie McLennan Memorial Fishing Derby” (2002-2006). We did something very special for Robbie. The committee and our loyal donors have built “The Dragonfly Scholarship Award” for him!
I won’t get into the details of the difficult Derby we had, and I can’t even remember what year that was, but it was wet and cold!
Robbie must have been watching over us the other years as we had the best weather, 250 people is better than 50 and what about those darn “Trout”? Has anyone caught one of them yet????
Well, maybe Robbie got there before us on those Saturday mornings; he always fished early in the morning, after all that is one of the best times! I like that story better than! “THERE’S NO TROUT IN THAT POND”!!!
This was a very difficult decision for me to make! There may be other ways of raising more money for the ”Robbie McLennan Scholarship Fund” and unfortunately at this point the Derby is not the way.
The entire Scholarship Fund has been transferred from the “Youth for Christ” organization to a Trust Account held by the “Community First Foundation”, a registered charitable organization that has an annual audit performed on its financial statements. Most of the scholarship fund is invested in a term deposit and the interest will hopefully cover most of the annual scholarship that is offered to an O.D.S.S. student. A big thank you to “Community First Foundation” for taking this responsibility over. Also a big thank you to “The Youth for Christ” organization for holding the funds in trust and for taking care of the paper work for all these years!
I thank you, my family thanks you and Robbie thanks you...
Sincerely Yours,
Kathy (Rob’s Mom)
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