Friday, January 30, 2009

A Sporting Tradition


I'd like to thank my friend John from The Upland Learning Curve for drawing my attention to The Old Hemlock Foundation.
I'll let everyone peruse the website as they see fit. There's an awful lot of information concerning George Bird and Kay Evans, not to mention photos of the Old Hemlock "family" and their dogs..
The main gratification for myself was seeing an old friend as one of the Trustees of the Foundation. Jeff Leach, his lovely wife Gabriella, and I go back a long way. The Leach's lived a few towns over and we belonged to the same hunt club together 20 or more years ago.
Jeff and Gabby are gentle folks, and birddog people of the first order, and they are most deserving of the honor of being Trustees of such a worthy organization. One that's purpose is to keep the memory, tradition and values of the Evans' and Old Hemlock alive for eternity, as they should be!
Gabriella is also a highly talented artist, and presented me years ago with a gift of pencil drawings of a quail and woodcock. They are some of my most prized possessions, and are displayed prominently in our home. These works of art will be featured in a post in the near future, as they are so deserving of recognition..

So congratulations to Jeff and Gabriella Leach, and all the Trustees and principals involved in the formation of such a worthy foundation..
Think about them in making a tax deductible donation to such a worthy cause as keeping our gunning traditions alive..

4 comments:

  1. I was real glad to learn about this web site, Bill. I've just really taken an interest in these particular dogs and so it is great to be able to learn so much about them and the folks responsible for their breeding. I'm looking forward to stopping in as the content grows.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks again for bringing the site to my attention, John..
    A very valuable find!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I must say, I was pretty happy to learn of this site. As you know, I attended the 10th OH reunion last March. Very nice bunch of people and when they call themselves a "Family", they're not kidding. Roger Brown handled Willie on his birds the whole time and I think it was a great start for an 8 mo old pup to be put on all those birds, let alone all the support I got.
    Everyone seems to want to help everyone else and wants other peoples' dogs to succeed. So different from the attitude I have seen in some of the all-age trials I have attended.
    I think I have a great pup but through him, I've made a lot of friends along the way.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The Old Hemlock family is indeed that… a family; I was very happy to see the work that LeJay put into this site, and we look forward to having many visitors with whom we can share the OH way of life... an Upland Sporting Life for sure!

    ReplyDelete