Welcome to Our 2017 Stewardship Dinner
Mid-Hudson Trout Unlimited
Annual Stewardship Dinner & Auction
Friday, October 27, 2017 – 6:00 pm
Rhinecliff Hotel - 4 Grinnell St. Rhinecliff, N.Y. 12533
Questions: Call 845-705-5150 or email: rgilmanjr@optonline.net
President’s Message
Dear Guests and Members,
If you’re reading this, it means that our chapter and the community of sportsmen at large is in your debt. Your attendance here put fertilized trout eggs in classrooms across the county. It put rods in the hands of kids more accustomed to video game controllers. It hooks children on vices and bobbins, feathers and thread and distances them from the more pernicious vices that are as close to them as the screens on their phones. Ladies and gentlemen, in a very real sense, you’ve brought natural life back to a place that virtual life dominates. For this you have our sincerest thanks.
We are not a monolith. As members and individuals we agree and disagree. But to our credit, we are civil. As the civility, discourse, and tolerance so common in my youth give way to bluster, innuendo, and invective, it becomes more and more clear that the lessons so many of us learned in the woods are lost to many. The hope of trout taught us to dream and persevere.Uneven ground taught us temperance. Ice taught us prudence; heat and humidity, endurance. The cruelty and danger in nature taught us interdependence. In the woods, we learned that we need each other to survive. We need as many friends as we can get.
With your help, we bring these lessons back to our neighborhoods and schools. With your help, we pass these lessons on. Again, thank you.
Cordially,
John L. Ahern
Verbal Auction Items: TBD