Fish-A-Thon :: Article
Hooked on Fishing
By Michelle Maghribi (Cupertino Courier, June 21, 2006)
It's an event with a special hook--so to speak. For more than 40 years, the Cupertino Lions Club has hosted a fishing day for children and adults with disabilities.
The annual Fish-A-Thon takes place at a private stocked pond at the Stevens Creek Quarry. And each year, the number of those attending grows.
This year's event, May 13, drew more than 100 anglers; some were in wheelchairs, some developmentally delayed, some visually impaired.
In the beginning, the fishing day was just for blind children. Two lifelong Cupertino residents were the catalyst for that first fishing derby nearly a half-century ago.
Peter Camarda, now 87, listened when his brother, Joe, now 73, told him about the blind children picked up by buses in the Cupertino Union School District. Joe was working as a bus dispatcher for the district--the only district in the '60s that offered an education to the blind, Peter recalls.
Serving the blind is a community service mission of the Lions Club, which also collects used eyeglasses, distributing them to those who can't afford to buy a pair.
Together with another longtime Cupertino resident, now deceased, Tony Voss--who owned the Stevens Creek Quarry at the time--the brothers put together that first Fish-A-Thon. Peter says the year was 1964.
"Tony Voss, who was not a Lions club member, agreed to provide a pond at the quarry for the kids to fish in, and my brother, Joe, was responsible for all of the transportation of the blind kids to and from their homes out to the quarry," Peter said.
Three generations of the Voss family, owners of the Stevens Creek Quarry, have continued to provide and prepare the small pond (including handicap access) for the annual event.
Pete, too, has been actively involved for its entire tenure--except for a five-year period during which a landslide on the property put the derby off. Thanks to a donation Pete secured from a family friend this year, the Lions Club was able to stock the pond with about 1,000 pounds of rainbow trout. "The fish are big, between 1 and 3 pounds apiece," he says proudly.
