Wednesday, September 26, 2007

We rally once again


Throughout the short but intense Castle Rock Fire, this community rallied in so many ways to help each other. Now that the fire is successfully out, we are rallying once again to celebrate together with the upcoming Kick Ash Bash and Castle Rock Firefighters Benefit Concert next weekend.

When we started talking about the idea for a community celebration, we held a few open public meetings to get input and ideas and had about 50 people show up to help. From that sprung the notion of a concert and we are so grateful that Steve Miller and Bruce Willis immediately expressed interest through their local representatives and found a joint date that would work. They are both donating their time, flying in their bands and crew, all to show their thanks to all those who bravely battled the Castle Rock Fire and kept our community safe. Carole King has now also joined the concert lineup to show her solidarity as a key part of our area community.

The organizing of this event sort of fell to the chamber of commerce and the staff has done a fantastic job pulling this all together in less than three weeks, especially on top of putting on the successful Ernest Hemingway Festival this past weekend. But I also wanted to thank the other people and individuals who quickly stepped up to help in this true community effort; Sam Gappmayer and The Sun Valley Center for the Arts staff who are playing a huge part in helping produce the concert and coordinating a Community Bulletin Board exhibit of fire photographs & artwork, sponsors like St. Luke's Wood River Medical Center, Sun Valley Co., Cox Communications and 20 other businesses and individuals at this date who are contributing cash and in-kind services so that as much of the ticket proceeds as possible can go to benefit the firefighters, the local media who are all contributing in-kind advertising, the local bands/musicians who are donating their time on Friday evening and Saturday, Ketchum city leaders and staff for permitting and other assistance, Ketchum Fire Chief Mike Elle and Ketchum Asst. Police Chief Mike McNeil who are coordinating the comp tickets for all firefighters, law enforcement and others who worked on the fire, the Ketchum/Sun Valley Rotary Club who is holding the "Roasted Duck Race" as part of the event and The Papoose Club and Sun Valley Aviation who are organizing other related activities for the weekend. We have been selling lots of tickets for the concert, many to people from out of town, so it should pretty busy weekend, which was also one of our goals. Thanks to everyone for rallying to make this happen and look forward to seeing you all out in Ketchum at the bash!

Carol Waller

Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber & Visitors Bureau




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