Endeavor to Persevere - Wisconsin Waterfowl Association

In Memory of Erich Pitz

By Rob Monette, Regional Director

This article originally appeared in Wisconsin Waterfowl Association’s November, 2020 Newsletter edition.

“Endeavour to persevere”; one of the great lines in movie history, but which could easily be the mantra of our WWA and one of our former Volunteers of the Year, Erich Pitz.

Erich Pitz, long-term WWA volunteer, former Volunteer of the Year and proud supporter of WWAs nesting box program, died October 14, 2020.

Perseverance is a trait shared by all of us in the fundraising business for the “cause”. We can not allow the coronavirus to make us lazy, we are all essential in this mission. Let me be a bit more specific, Erich Pitz, who I mentioned above, was a friend, comrade and, at times, a pain… all because he demonstrated how to persevere in his uncanny ability to raise funds for WWA’s Wood Duck Box Nesting program. Erich passed away on October 14th at the too young age of 67, and has left a void in our WWA family.

No one can take the place of Erich and his larger than life personality, a trait he used to fund our nesting program from his seemingly never-ending supply of friends and business colleagues willing to support Erich’s cause. You could not say no to Erich, he endeavored to persevere. Who can, who will, be willing to take on this endeavor to continue Erich’s legacy with this successful and worthy program (along with the challenges it presents)?? Erich left large footprints to fill, let us know if you’d be interested in stepping in.

Now onto my sales pitch: Have you gotten your 2021 Conservation Calendar yet? If not, purchase one (or more, they make great holiday gifts) here. Interested in selling calendars for us? We’ve got great incentive prizes for our sellers.

Drawing November 17th: tickets just $10 each for this quintessential deer hunting rifle!

Don’t forget to check out the class A’s (need not be present to win raffles) we have going on – there’s some hard-to-find firearms, a waterfowlers dream hunt raffle, a snowblower and electric bikes to name a few) and remember these dates and hopefully I’ll see you there: December 3rd WWA’s Christmas Bash (featuring our Waterfowlers Dream Hunt raffle drawing), December 6th for WWA Day at the Xmas tree farm, the 10th for our Lakeshore/Manitowoc Chapter’s 31st annual banquet and December 19th at the Marsh Inn for the SYKL Electric bike raffle drawing.

As Erich used to tell me: “Keep your powder dry”.