Community News by Tom Harris, Associate Editor
MVFA held its annual Christmas dinner last Saturday at the Fire Station. This free event goes back many years and is possibly the longest running MVFA event – began by its founder Lois Pearson. As before, the dinner was a great place to see old friends, and meet new ones. There were over 165 dinners served, and Santa and his helper elves were here, spreading holiday cheer and presents for over 40 kids.
Thanks to the MVFA board of directors: Cheryl Owen, Trent and Mary Williams, Tony Christiansen and Karen Jensen and their staff of volunteers – including “Santa”, Heidi and the elves – for the decorations and all the work in setting up for this event. Thanks and kudos are extended to Chief Rosevear and his great team of Firefighters for helping out and enabling this event to take place once more. Special thanks to Kirk Bronsord and Matt Ridgeway for preparing a fantastic holiday feast of turkey and all the trimmings. We’re pretty sure nobody went away hungry.
MVFA announced that Kirk and Matt will be leasing the diner/café at Finnon Lake. Our community is very fortunate to have such a wonderful venue, and even more so with these two professionals taking over.
MVFA has long been a supporter of the Mosquito fire department. Even when Finnon Lake Recreation area was closed as the dam was being rebuilt, MVFA sponsored multiple annual dinner events and other activities at the station. Donations from these events paid their bills to maintain Finnon Lake, and bought tools, equipment and other off-budget items for the fire department.
This year, MVFA bought over $23,000 worth of equipment and furnishings for our fire department. MVFA provides this free turkey dinner to show its appreciation to the community and all its volunteer members, and especially to our fire fighters and Chief.
The Mosquito Volunteer Fire Department (MVFD), was established in 1972 and purchased the Finnon Lake property in 1997 in order to secure a large body of water for community fire protection. With the establishment of the separate taxpayer funded Mosquito Fire Protection District (MFPD) in 1978, MVFD reorganized as a 501(c)(3) non-profit and changed its name to MVFA in late 2006. It has been dedicated to the safety and betterment of our community ever since.
MVFA board meetings are held on the first Thursday of each month at 3:00 PM at the Mosquito fire station. Much of the information contained in the Sentinel is provided by MVFA’s Mosquito Byte, which is published each month and posted at http://www.gomvfa.org.
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