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| Jake at the Wolf River launch. |
sandhill7@gmail.com
Jake Stachovak was making a point
about how you don’t have to be an extraordinary person to accomplish an
extraordinary feat.
The video clip playing over his
shoulder did an effective job of it.
Stachovak (pronounced
Sta-HO-vee-ak) was addressing a crowd of 110 at Mosquito Hill Nature Center
near New London on Oct. 14. He was this year’s Charlotte Bates Fenlon Memorial
speaker.
Charlotte was a very early
volunteer at Mosquito Hill and the first wife of Dr. Charles “Chick” Fenlon,
who established an endowment fund to support an educational speaker each year
in her memory. Chick, a wonderful guy, died a year ago May. I had the pleasure
of serving with him on the committee that picks the speakers, through my day
job at the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region, which also is where
the endowment fund is located.
Jake’s video shows him talking
about the rigors paddling in the cold early in his 5,740-mile kayak trip around
the eastern third of the United States. In the background is his beached
17-foot Kevlar Seda kayak. As Jake is talking away in the foreground, the video
shows his boat slip off of shore and drift farther and farther out into the
water.
