HOPE – The highlight of the Friday Watermelon Festival schedule was the annual Lions Club Fish Fry. This is the second largest yearly fundraiser for the club, second only to the Christmas Auction. Proceeds from the fish fry are used to fund various Lions Club charities. Members of the Lions Club were helped out by students from the Garrett Memorial Leo Club and the Nevada FFA. Cooking over 700 pounds of catfish, this year’s fish fry fed 450 people between dine-in and carry-out. Bobby Loe, assistant treasurer of the club, commented on this year’s attendance, “It was good and very typical of the last several years.”
We were interested in some of the history of the fish fry, so we turned to club member Robin Lee. “The fish fry began sometime in the late 1960’s as a chicken meal for the Poultry Festival. People like Sheriff Jimmy Griffin, Milton ‘Scrub’ Mosier, Claude Byrd, and Y.C. Coleman were involved in the Lions Club at the time. Then, when the modern-day Watermelon Festival was revived in the mid-1970’s, the Lions Club switched over to serving a catfish meal, which has stood the test of time.”
Photos by Davis Johnson