Back To School Garage Sale:
The Club will be having a “Back To School Garage Sale” on Saturday, July 22, 2023 8:00 AM-12:00 Noon at the POC Community Center Pavilion! Clothes and Shoes for students of all ages will be available. Come One, Come All!

Farmer’s Market:
The Service Club appreciates your support at our POC Farmer’s Market Booth, held the 2nd Saturday of every month; next one being Saturday, August 12, 2023 from 8:00AM to 12:00 Noon. We always have a variety of homemade goodies, plants, hand crafted items, our “Service Club Cookbooks” and our “POC- End of The Road” License Plate Covers!

Meetings:
The Service Club’s next meeting is August 3, 2023 at 10:00 a.m., at the POC Community Center. All Ladies are welcome!

Fall Garage Sale:
The Ladies continue to accept your generous donations of household, kitchen, and decorative items; small appliances; clothes; shoes; toys; children’s and baby items, etc. Due to limited space, we cannot accept furniture until our next Garage Sale, which is scheduled for September 30, 2023 from 8:00 AM- 2:00 PM at the POC Community Center Pavilion. You can leave your items in the “Drop Box” at the front of our Donation Center, or, to donate larger items, please contact one of the Service Club Ladies listed below:
Alane Haardt- 281-416-6028
Marie Hawes- 361-920-2322
Nan Burnett- 832-276-5948
Nancy Ladshaw- 830-832-0510

To commemorate their 65th anniversary on June 15th, Edna Payne presented Tom and Pat Eckstrom a hand-striched plaque she made especially for them.

Morris Crumrine

“Navy Gun Tech”

Being aboard the “USS Cochran” was a bittersweet experience for Morris Crumrine. He has fond memories of fellow crew members, but not so good memories of the ship’s food. Morris relates that “the bigger ships got the better food” while his ship got powdered food items. Good food or not didn’t diminish the fact that life on the ship was rigorous and demanding, but overall, it was a good experience. “Not a lot of people got to see what I got to see,” Morris noted.

Ports that Morris’s ship went to include the Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Mauritius (off the coast of Africa). During the Iran-Iraqi War his ship sat out in the Indian Ocean for 76 days.

Being a “gun tech,” Morris’s official title was a “fire control tech” which meant he monitored and maintained the radar system for the ship’s guns.

The destroyer (the USS Cochran) Morris was on was the smallest war ship during his tour of duty. The ship was 440 ft. long with an average of 330 crew members. In 1980 Morris recounts that “our ship got to rescue and transport Vietnamese war refugees from the China Sea and take them to Singapore. The refugees numbered 142 men, women, and children.”

Originally from New Braunfels Morris grew up in a farming and ranching community. He has lived in Seadrift for six years. Morris described Seadrift as a “quiet little fishing town with nice people and low crime.”

After his tour of the duty with the Navy Morris worked construction and trained horses. Today he enjoys fishing and loves his aquarium.

We salute Morris Crumrine’s service to our country. Without our brave soldiers in the military where would we be today?

“USS Cochran”

The excitement continues to mount as we get closer to the start date of our renovations to the Community Center Pavilion. The plans have been approved, but the work will not begin until after the big POC Chamber of Commerce Boat Show in October. You won’t want to miss that!

Our hard working board of directors are already at work raising money needed to redo the main building in the complex. No one works as hard as our grant writer, Nan Burnett. She is continuously finding new resources for funding, but we continue to hold fundraisers and accept donations. On July 29, David Couch who puts on the Mullet Invitational and Little Mullet Tournaments each year, has invited us to put a table at Sharkey’s during the tournament. He and his family have generously donated to the Facelift Project in the past and continue to support it.

The Community Center is an important part of POC. For almost 25 years, it has been used for weddings, funerals, meetings, tournaments, garage sales, Warrior Weekends, senior luncheons and much more. We are so lucky to have this wonderful complex in our small community. Many, many people worked countless hours to raise money to build it because they saw a need and knew that need would only increase as the years passed. Now, repairs and renovations are needed to keep it going for at least another 25 years. Our community is growing by leaps and bounds and the community center is going to grow and improve with it. Be a part of preserving the past and preparing for the future. Donations can be made at FNB POC or online on PayPal to Port O’Connor Community Center. Get on board and become involved in keeping POC the special place that it is.

-Diane Cooley

Sacking oyster shell in the summer heat is not for the weak or weary but on Thursday, June 29, a dozen Braskem team members as part of their company’s volunteer program.
(https://volunteers.braskem.com/en/AboutTheProgram) came to a county lot in Seadrift to do just that. The oyster shell has been sitting in a heap long enough to have congealed into an almost solid mass. With rakes and sharp-shooters the hard working folks clawed it loose and shoveled it into mesh bags. Each bag, weighing about 30 pounds, was then hauled to a storage pile. The bags of shell are destined for a restoration project.

No doubt area fishermen have noticed that small shell islands throughout Espiritu Santo Bay have been eroding. Many are no longer visible during normal high tide. These islands are important habitat for nesting birds like oystercatchers, terns, and skimmers, and lack of this habitat is threatening those bird populations. That’s why San Antonio Bay Partnership received a CMP grant to help restore some of the islands and the caring folks from Braskem spent a hot summer morning shoveling shell.

The effort is far from over, however. More oyster shell sacking workdays are being planned. Workdays include cold beverages, lunch, and presentations about nesting oystercatchers and the island restoration project. If you would like to participate contact Allan Berger, allanrberger@outlook.com