An Event 100 Years in the Making

Since many of you were in attendance at the celebration of the 100th anniversary of our boathouse on Saturday, September 13th, you know that a great time was had by all.

This post, originally sent through our Yahoo Group listserv, is a special thanks from PBC president, Bob Price, to the many volunteers who worked so tirelessly over the preceding months to make the event such a grand success.

We can hardly wait to see what they come up with for the 140th anniversary of the Club next year!

I wanted to add my thanks to all who made our Centennial Celebration such a nice event! The House looked great, the turnout was impressive, and the party was a lot of fun. When you get a chance, please let the following people know they really put on a great show:

§ Camilla Durfee
§ Gib Durfee
§ Susan Trice
§ John Lavery
§ Pam Roberts
§ Katherine Hoffman
§ Barbara Corrigan
§ Robert Cooper
§ Catherine Souvain

More thanks go to Jake Higley and Sylvia Frayne for setting up the boat christenings. For those who were unable to witness it, the ceremony was great. It’s a privilege that we have as a rowing community to name our boats after the special and important people in our sport, and to see new racing shells the David Challinor, the Cynthia Cole, and the Allen P. Rosenberg receive a proper welcome was truly a treat. Now let’s make sure we win lots of races in them!

As we mentioned on Saturday night, the planning for the Centennial Celebration provided the opportunity to appreciate the House and its history - and I ask the PBC membership to support our Committees to ensure that it sees another 100 years. Specifically, the House Committee, led by Cal Sutliff, has a long list of House projects in need of volunteers. Whether leading as a project manager or providing a few hours of elbow grease, any assistance you could provide will certainly help speed these projects along. Please contact Cal or any member of the Board of Governors if you’d like to help.

We also have a new effort underway - a few energetic volunteers have assembled a History Committee! We realized as we prepared for the party that many members have nuggets of information that isn’t collected by the Club and we want to mine those riches. With more detail to come on how the Committee will work, let me now list the Committee members so you can share with any of them info, photos, texts or objects you have that shed light on our history:

§ Bill Lanouette
§ Bob Parke
§ Elizabeth Webber
§ Gretchen Ellsworth
§ Barbara Corrigan

At the party, we welcomed an impressive guest speaker, Tersh Boasberg, chairman of the DC Historic Preservation Review Board. Tersh gave an entertaining and informative recount of some key historical events that shaped our early history as a Club. I’ll ask Tersh to provide his text so that we can post on this forum - at times it was difficult to hear the story as many members were anxious to get the party started! But I’m sure those who were able to hear it found it fun and enlightening so we’ll share it with everyone. Thanks, again, Tersh!

So, once more, great job to everyone involved in making the Centennial Celebration such a success. It was wonderful to see so many PBC friends and family having such a fun time at the Club!

-Bob