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Clubs scramble to fill $$ void left by storm
Vidalia onions for sale
SF-cobbler
Food has long been a staple of the Great Ogeechee Seafood Festival and many civic groups sell food to raise funds for good causes. - photo by File photo

Hurricane Matthew made an impact on Bryan County in more ways than one.

Some are just now being felt.

Storm damage and recovery efforts moved the Richmond Hill-Bryan County Chamber of Commerce to cancel the 2016 Great Ogeechee Seafood Festival, which would have been in its 18th year.

A highly-anticipated annual event for thousands around the region, the seafood festival is a revenue source for many, from businesses to civic clubs.

Instead of just counting their losses, local non-profit organizations and civic groups went to the drawing board to come up with creative ways to make up the difference.

"It’s funny how a situation like Hurricane Matthew makes us think outside the box," said Barry Hall, past Richmond Hill Exchange Club president.

Crab stew and shrimp jambalaya have been the club’s menu staple they dish out by the bowl. People missed their fix for the first time since 1998.

"As a matter of fact, the Exchange Club was one of the first founding organizations of the Seafood Festival," Hall said.

In comparison, the Pregnancy Center of Richmond Hill is a relatively new festival participant, having only two years under its belt.

Director Monica Easter said the 2015 festival brought in enough funding to cover several months worth of operational costs.

"It was definitely a hit for us because of the fact that we are so small right now," Easter said of the 2016 cancellation. "We’re kind of working extra to try to gain funds."

Easter said her organization hoped to have a lot more funding by now. But she is starting a fundraising campaign that includes expanding the group’s annual event to include live music, a new feature planners hope will attract more support.

"We normally do our annual Girls Night Out, but we’re really pushing that this year because that’s going to help make up the funds from Hurricane Matthew," Easter said of the May event.

For Hall and the Exchange Club, that out-the-box thinking got them to launch a Vidalia sweet onion sale. The Exchange Club partnered with G&R Farms in Tattnall County to sell 5-pound bags of sweet onions from now until April 29.

The onions are available by pre-order and a one-day sale on April 29.

"The whole idea came about because we were concerned that we would not have enough to fund all these activities at prior year levels that we have in the past," Hall said. "We’re running very, very close. I will say that. We are running very close on money this year."

In addition to the Seafood Festival, the club also sells advertisements in school calendars. The calendars fall in line with the holidays and major events in Bryan County Schools

"We actually print the calendars, take them to the Board of Education, and they send them home with the kids," Hall said.

The calendar ad sales are in its third year.

"For years and years and years, it was just the Seafood Festival. Then, all the sudden, somebody got this idea about the calendar," Hall said.

He said the Seafood Festival and the calendars are the club’s major fundraisers. It uses the collections to support Student of the Month/Year, Public Safety Officer of the Year, Child Abuse Prevention, the YMCA and the annual fishing derby.

"If we don’t have enough money, then these go lacking," Hall said. "If we have a good response to the onion sale, we should be able to breeze right along here and fund all of these."

Fundraising is also critical to the Pregnancy Center of Richmond Hill, according to Easter, especially with recent goals to relocate, add mobile service, and expand to offer medical care, like ultrasounds.

"I feel like we’re important to the community for the fact that we try to offer women and men education on unplanned pregnancies," Easter said. "We’re a faith-based organization, but we totally feel like everybody should be educated before they make a decision."

"It all goes right back into the community," Hall said of the Exchange Club. "Our higher priority is our kids and anything we can do to showcase the talent of our young people here."

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This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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