We had FUN!!
Sunday November 2, 2025, Forty-nine RMCCers celebrated the club’s 50th anniversary with Good food (of course!), including an incredible cake by Elaine O’Reilly; Beautiful photos; Timelines and posters of our 50 years; River stories, Officer, trip coordinator, and 50th celebration volunteer recognitions; and Renewal of old and beginning of new boating friendships.
Zoomers and the cake!
Our celebration started with a rolling photo show, narrated in part by Jeff Keeler. After our volunteer A/V technicians (Chet Pauls, Virginia Winter, Bill Ashworth and Leslie Taylor) wrestled the Zoom and in-house A/V into submission (it was a battle!), we had a very short business meeting — mostly to thank our 2025 volunteers and to elect Officers for 2026.
Special THANKS to our 2025 Officers:
- Boatmaster/Quartermaster — Miry Broughall
- Conservation — Michael Johnson
- Instruction — Debbie Hinde
- Media — Anne Fiore
- Membership — Bill Ashworth
- President — Kathryn Mutz
- Treasurer — Bill Rivers
- Trip Coordinator — Brookie Gallagher
- Webmaster — Dan Custer
And Thanks to our 2025 Trip, Instruction, and Event Coordinators:
Karen Amundson, Bill Ashworth, Mat Bozek, Anne Fiore, Craig and Nita Flora, Mark Flora, Brookie Gallagher, Debbie Hinde, Doug Hurcomb, Chris Kelly, Kathryn Mutz, Elaine, O’Reilly, Jeff Oxenford, Penelope Purdy, Louise Richards, Karla Tanner, and Leslie Taylor.
Our small “Thank-you Gift” to these volunteers, who kept us organized and safely on the water, is a blue 10′ 50th Anniversary camstrap printed with “ROCKY MOUNTAIN CANOE CLUB 50th ANNIVERSARY — Riding the rivers since 1975“
2025 Otter Conservation Award
Contributing to a significant history of RMCC support for conservation, Michael Johnson, Conservation Coordinator, announced our 2025 Otter Award. He briefly described the award process/criteria and nominated entities, thanked his committee members (Anne Fiore, Hi Howard, Bill Rivers, Lindsay Meeks, and Ted Englemann), and announced the recipient: Colorado Stream Access Coalition. Plans for presentation of the award — perhaps in person, perhaps by Zoom — will be announced in the near future.
2026 Officer Elections
Most of our 2025 Officers agreed to stand for re-election. TripMaster Brookie is retiring after four years, Anne Fiore is retiring after four years as either Conservation or Media Coordinator, and I after eight years as President. Thank you! Thank you! again to our Officers!
To fill these positions, Leslie Taylor volunteered to transition — with Brookie’s help — to TripMaster and Shannon Syrstad to take over Media from Anne Fiore. Further, Jeff Oxenford, who was, unfortunately? not in attendance, was nominated (and seconded) for President. Drafted you say? Apparently it is a tradition in RMCC officer elections. All were elected unanimously by in-house voice vote and Zoomer thumbs up.
2026 Officers:
- Boatmaster/Quartermaster — Miry Broughall
- Conservation — Michael Johnson
- Instruction — Debbie Hinde
- Media — Shannon Syrstad
- Membership — Bill Ashworth
- President — Jeff Oxenford ?
- Treasurer — Bill Rivers
- Trip Coordinator — Leslie Taylor
- Webmaster — Dan Custer
Congratulations to all and we’ll see who shows up for our joint 2025-26 Officers Meeting later this year! And, as always, ALL Officers would welcome your assistance with their duties — with or without your intention to run for office in 2027.
Early History
The highlight of the afternoon was a presentation on the early history of the club by founding and long-time member Jeff Keeler, assisted with stories by many of the 1970s and early 1980s founders/boaters in attendance:
- Jeff and Lorna Keeler (1975)
- Jeanne and Bruce (deceased) Waters (1975)
- Tom and Ginger Waymire (1975)
- Carol and Bob Aikin (1977)
- John and Kathy Carty Mullen (1977)
- Mike Hardesty (1977)
- Kerry and Pauline Edwards (1981)
- Rick Andrews (1983)
- Lyn Berry and Jeanne Younghaus (1984)
- Wally Booth (1980s)
and a few others, who could not attend in person, contributed to the written history:
- Bob and Linda McLaughlin
- John Licht
- Jill and Bob Stoecker (on Zoom!)
Our celebration venue, the Greenway Park Clubhouse — once again hosted by Mat Bozek — was decorated with posters and timelines of 50 years of RMCC history gleaned from decades of newsletters and annual reports by several volunteers (Miry Broughall, Kit Williams, Bill Rivers, Kathryn Mutz, Debbie Hinde, Virginia Winter, Anne Fiore, Susan Barbetti, Bill Ashworth and Karen Amundson). We also perused several tables of memorabilia (maps, t-shirts, photos, early documents/newsletters/articles, mugs, patches, etc. etc.) brought by several ‘savers’.
Before Year’s End and Into the New Year
To further enjoy our history and look forward to our future:
- Jeff’s history of the club and at least part of the photo show and historical records will soon be distributed via another Post and uploaded to the website for posterity.
- Dan Custer will be scanning additional Voyageur’s Companions and uploading them to our website’s Newsletter Archive.
- Natalie Mack will be gauging interest in and, perhaps, collecting orders for additional 50th commemorative cam straps. Watch for an upcoming Post or GoogleGroup announcement.
- Shutterfly/Flicker history booklet — Interested in taking what we’ve developed and massaging it into a beautiful, printable format? Please volunteer!
Kathryn, RMCC President