By By Keith Castleberry
The 28th Annual Rotary Fiddlers Convention was held this past Saturday and we had record crowds in attendance along with some of the best musicians to date. A lot of hard work by the Rotary Club went into this event and the members should be proud of themselves for a well-done job. This year's income from the Fiddlers Convention and from the advertisement sales should help to continue our Rotary Academic All-Star Program that will be held in May.
I wish I could tell you how many were in attendance, but I won't have the final numbers for a while. I do know that the auditorium looked about full. There were a lot of folks from all around the area. This event brings a lot of people to Atmore.
We are especially grateful to John Swift and the Butt Burners for providing their wonderful barbeque. Even though John was at a contest, he pre-cooked the barbeque for us in advance. We also very much appreciate the businesses that purchased advertising sales for the Fiddlers Program book. Pepsi always goes out of their way to help us with the convention and we thank them for their help.
WNSI 105.9 FM helped us get our Fiddlers' prize money up to $1,000 this year with the Wade "Pappy" Ray Foundation contribution. We hope to continue this relationship. Many thanks to the Escambia County High School staff for allowing us to use their facilities and a special thanks to David McKinley who stayed with us all day.
We thank our families for helping us and understanding our absence at home Saturday. Many from our families were working with us and we appreciate it very much.
And finally, a big help to us in advertising the Fiddlers Convention was the Gulf Coast Bluegrass Music Association. They have featured this event in their newsletter and many of their members participated Saturday.