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The 2020 Founders Fund Event

On November 18, 2020, TGF hosted its annual Founders Fund event - not a reception at the Union League Club, this year, regrettably, but in cyberspace via Zoom. While we missed the drinks and hors d'oeurvres and the companionship of old and new friends, we were able to include participants from around the region and around the country as we honored this year's scholarship recipient, Megan Hazlitt, and longtime TGF member David Kramer.

Megan Hazlitt, who is currently working on an M.S. degree at the State University of New York Department of Environmental and Forest Biology in Syracuse on her way to a Ph.D. in freshwater fisheries biology, wowed everyone with an ex tempore speech that began with the origins of her interest in the field when working on brook trout restoration projects as an undergraduate and with related work in Oregon, Alaska, and in marine biology. She then explained her current work on the functional ecology of fish over a 100-year history to develop policies for stream management, and she concluded with a passionate statement on the need for the engagement of scientists with the making of public policy. She is exemplary of the students that the Founders Fund exists to support.

David Kramer was introduced by David Berman, who praised his wise counsel as a member of the TGF board of directors for over thirty years and recalled his legal work in establishing TGF as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 1966. Sara Low also introduced him, recalling their first meeting at Greenwoods on the Farmington River, comparing him with humor, but also surprising accuracy, to Theodore Gordon himself, and concluding that "TGF would not exist without him." In a short, eloquent speech, David Kramer then reflected on his more than fifty-seven years of involvement with Theodore Gordon Flyfishers, praised the current strength of the organization and its leadership, and affirmed that the Founders Fund (and recipients such as Megan Hazlitt) are "models of what America needs now and in the future."