Our Club will once again furnish a snack/lunch for the returning Flint area athletes –we have been involved in every one of the prior 60 years of CANUSA!–on Sunday, August 12.  As has been our custom the last few years we will plan to do an “assembly line” preparation of the lunches a few days prior to that– probably AUG 7 or 8.  We will need 10-12 people for that part of the operation and likely no more than 4 to make the trek to Port Huron to place the snacks on the buses. So, please mark your calendars in order that we have plenty of help on those days.

Sean and Jim also made these points:

–the Flint Olympian Games (the “qualifing” events to determine CANUSA athlete selection in the Flint area) Opening Ceremony is July 10 at Houston Stadium on the Northwestern High School campus–all are welcome.

–the CANUSA Appreciation Dinner is Thursday, July 26–we can send several West Flint Optimists to this; and the Golf Outing fundraiser is Friday, July 27–do we want to send a team representing West Flint Optimists?

–CANUSA Leadership is seeking major sponsorships for the Games and has begun some affiliation with the Crim Foundation.  Depending on whether the Games are HOME or AWAY, the cost ranges from $120,000 to $150,000 for each year and they have no more than a year’s funding on hand. With Sean Croudy’s relatively new position as Director of Community Recreation for the City of Flint (he was in the Counselling Department of the Flint Schools for many years) there is now some improved coordination between the Schools and the City.

–Our Club’s involvement with the rich heritage of the CANUSA Games is significant: in addition to the lunch/snack in “away” years and the continental breakfast in the “home” years, we also provide monies for the Ralph Boyer CANUSA Scholarship Fund to help Flint area athletes with the cost of attending the Games when they are held in Hamilton.  We have a great association with this very worthy event and the fine people of the CANUSA Leadership. In case you weren’t aware, they help at our Chicken Dinner fundraiser (selling/buying tickets and working the floor at the dinner) and for several years they have bought tickets and attended our $5,000 Raffle, so we truly have partners in this group.

Workers from our club included: Bill Hentgen, Mic Goulet, Jack Medemar, Bonnie Kelley, Tina Olshove, Phil Holmblade, Greg Hilliker, Joe Bushey and his son, Michael, Steve Schlott and his wife, Rose.

We also had two of our CANUSA Partners to help: Dan Berezny and Rooster Daly.

In addition to the above workers bringing/supplying diners, these members also brought groups to dine: Jeff Dennings, Joe Farah and Ken Cullen.

Apologies to anyone I may have missed.

Bill will have a report soon to indicate the financial results. In the meantime, anyone who still has money out for sold tickets, or any unsold tickets, please get all of that to Bill as soon as possible so he can finalize the results. Remember, any sold, but unused, tickets boost the bottom line profit of the activity.

Thanks to all, especially Bill for his leadership in chairing this event.

Submitted, Steve Schlott