. Thank you all - we couldn't have done it without you.
"Couldn't have done what?" you ask.
The Committee was founded in 1992 with two stated goals. One goal was to provide an ongoing maintenance program for K.C. Geiger Park, partnering with the City of St. Marys to allow the City to use more of its resources in the other City parks. The other goal was to perpetuate the Committee, by setting up a fund within the St. Marys Community Foundation that was sufficiently large to provide for the Park using only interest and dividends earned. Our target, set back in 1992, was to raise $100,000 in principle.
Through operation of the K.C. Geiger Park concession stands, a "Yard Sale" fundraiser, individual donations and bequests and eleven Duck Races, since 1992 the K.C. Geiger Park Improvement Committee has provided more than $75,000 for park improvement projects and mowing, fertilizing and rolling the ball diamonds and soccer fields, meeting our first goal.
What we have done, is to have also reached our second goal. This year's outstanding support of the Duck Race has put us over the top. There were high-fives in the Duck Booth on Saturday night, after Nancy Koch, of 744 Augustus Street here in town, bought ticket number 1343 to put the K.C. Geiger Park Improvement Fund eighty-eight cents over $100,000. That was the 16,600th Duck Race ticket sold in eleven races, and we went on this weekend to sell an additional 887 tickets.
The Committee has benefitted from the volunteer efforts of many dozens of people through the years, but current Committee President Rees McKee deserves special mention. His idea to try a duck race as a fundraiser was nearly laughed out of the room at an early 1993 meeting, but Rees was persuasive and the "crazy" idea was tried. Since then he has volunteered hundreds if not thousands of hours of his time to the planning, set-up and execution of the annual event. The result is the entertaining Celebrity Regatta and Duck Race in which thousands of people participate every year, in one way or another.
Thanks to volunteers like Rees McKee, dedicated supporters like Larry Schaaf and all our sponsors, and the people of St. Marys, K.C. Geiger Park will now continue to be one of the finest recreational facilities in Ohio for a long, long time. Thank you all - we couldn't have done it without you.
The K.C. Geiger Park Improvement Committee
Chris Botkin, Secretary
K.C. Geiger Park, June 1, 2003.
