Interviews of our original club members and interesting bits of history.
Tom McMillan
as interviewed by Andrew Feldman
Tom McMillan
as interviewed by Andrew Feldman
Tom McMillan has been a member of the Santa Cruz Fly Fishermen since its inception in 1978. He served as the club's first secretary, and was the first president to serve two consecutive terms (1980-1981). Tom has many memories of the early days of the club. I found the information on the club's first meeting to be particularly interesting.
Tom was informed of the club's first meeting by way of a yellow piece of paper posted at Ernie's Casting Pond. The first meeting was held at the DeLaveaga School in the multi-purpose room. Nearly thirty anglers were in attendance. There was no set program for this meeting, as the purpose of the meeting was to gather a group of guys and gauge whether there was enough interest in starting a local fly fishing club. Tom remembers the genesis of the club in incredibly good detail, "Somebody in the crowd said, "Can I make a motion?", and the crowd agreed. The anonymous angler stated, "I move that we have a fly club, all in favor, say aye", and the crowd overwhelmingly approved.
Then somebody said "well if we're gonna have a club, we have to have a president, I nominate Ernie Kinzli", and the crowd agreed that Ernie would be president. When it came time to nominate a secretary, the room went silent. Then somebody said, "Well McMillan's a school teacher, he knows how to spell and he can add and subtract, I nominate Tom". And that's how Tom McMillan became the first secretary of the Santa Cruz Fly Fishermen. Well, the club has come a long way since its humble beginnings in 1978. Tom has many more good stories and I hope to write about them in future newsletters.