Seafood Festival and Car Show winner
To the editor:
Everyone was a winner at the Matlacha Mariners ninth annual southwest Florida seafood festival and car show.
The festival, having passed its ninth year was an amazing success largely due to hard work, great weather and overwhelming community support. The 2010 event showcased a day of fun for everyone with fantastic food, great music, plenty of ice cold beverages, more than 200 classic automobiles and the addition of new activities for the kids.
One of the featured attractions for the day was when Holly Salisbury, youth mission group president from Pine Island Community Church pulled the winning ticket for a, “2010 Harley-Davidson Softail Deluxe” motorcycle. Seasonal vacationer and New Jersey resident Lenny Kurylo was the official winner. Lenny, who only got a single ticket for the drawing, told his wife Pat he knew he was going to win as soon as he got his ticket. After confirming the winning ticket Lenny told Matlacha Mariner Jerry Tolliver, now I guess I can retire the Goldwing that I’ve been riding for the past 32 years and my Harley buddies won’t make me ride back of the pack anymore.
While preparing for large events like the annual seafood festival and car show, the Matlacha Mariners realize the overwhelming support it takes to make them successful. Some of the reasons they are so successful is because of people, and supporters like Mariner John Jones, for the additional effort he put into making the car show a first class event, and Mariner Rick Williams for leading the charge on the seafood festival side of things, our wonderful Matlacha Hookers for their continued and invaluable support, Pine Island Community Church and its Youth Mission Group for their dedicated efforts, Officers Neil Hamilton and John Farese from the Lee County’s Sheriff’s Department, Honc Industries on Pine Island, all of the great Food Vendors, the Specialty and Craft Vendors, the Various Musicians, Sound and Stage personnel Richard Voss, Mike Chura, Butch Gay, also Chuck Ley for his emcee expertise, all of the Matlacha Mariner volunteers and Division Coordinators, Bill Wood “Morning Blend” on FOX 4, Kyle Jordan WINK TV News, the Pine Island Eagle news, The Breeze newspaper in Cape Coral, ValleyCrest Landscape Companies in Fort Myers, Scott Miller who has helped provide a Gator for all our events, along with David Dean of Family Traditions Fishing Charters that made it happen, also a big thank you to all the car clubs and individual owners of the fantastic automobiles that were on display. To our Wonderful Sponsors; Little Lilly’s Island Deli on Pine Island (Bokeelia), Crown Trophy of Cape Coral, Roger Dean Chevrolet of Cape Coral, L.C.E.C in North Fort Myers, Bone Fish Grill in Cape Coral, Yuengling and JJ Taylor Distributors of Fort Myers and last, but certainly not least, Bert’s Bar and Grill in Matlacha.
We would also like to express our overwhelming gratitude to the thousands of attendees for their support and with that we would like to include the numerous media publications that have supported this event with articles and public service broadcast announcements that “we” weren’t even aware of.
The success of this event will undoubtedly be reflected by the Matlacha Mariners’ ability to more effectively support the various charitable needs of the Greater Pine Island Community.
If for any reason we have forgotten to acknowledge or thank someone who was involved in making this year’s event a huge success please accept our sincere apologies and understand that we do realize who you are and the Matlacha Mariners would like to express their sincere appreciation, Thank You One and All.
We would like to conclude this review by wishing fellow Mariner, Larry Tomlinson, a speedy recovery. We hope to see everyone at our next big event, “the 11th annual Southwest Florida Blues Festival” scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 20, for all Mariner details and event updates log onto; www.MatlachaMariners.org Or www.SouthwestFloridabluesFestival.com
Submitted by,
Matlacha Mariner member
Jerry Tolliver