Thanksgiving is a good time to reflect on all the blessings that we have and the Cuyahoga Valley Longhouse has many. We are blessed with great community support for our organization, with schools that provide, permit and assist us in our membership recruiting and our cities that provide low cost rental of their facilities.
We have CVNSND Officers that work hard to growing our organization and many fathers that help out however they can. Most of all we are thankful for the families that join our organization to spend time together creating memories. This fall about 260 of our members spent time at Camp Fitch creating memories. Mike Urbanowicz our medicine man did a great job organizing the campout and even brought some nice weather. It was nice to see many of our new members at camp. Friday started out with the Halloween party and Jungle Terry. The Nation Chiefs had a very difficult job picking winners in the costume contest. I’m glad I didn’t have their job. Saturday, Lake Erie calmed down a little to allow the dads and kids to have rock skipping, rock collecting contests on the beach. I expected to claim my family’s rock skipping championship for the 3rd year in a row, but my son had a few good throws and now I’m the exchamp. I know how Mike Tyson feels… I don’t want to talk about the campout any more.
We had about 55 entries for our Rain Gutter Regatta. The Seneca and Cheyenne tribes do a nice job running this event. The people making Balloon figures were top notch. It was entertaining just to see what balloon figures they would make next. There were many tight races in the Regatta, eventually we were able to declare a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winner for each grade and one best looking boat winner.
The Seminole Tribe organized this year’s Ice Skating Party at Ice Land in Strongsville. The weather outside was terrific but we still had 150 members show up to skate. Three hours of ice skating is a lot of skating, but when the day was over I could not believe how quickly the time had passed.
Hope everyone has a Happy and Safe Holiday Season! Chief “Howling Coyote” Wisniewski
