Getting A Littly Quacky
Duck race raises at least $50,000 for St. Michael Foundation
While many who gathered at Holiday Springs Water Park Saturday morning had no skin in the game, they certainly had ducks in the water at the 29th annual Great Texarkana Duck Race.
The park’s Lazy River offered a swift current that carried some 11,000 yellow plastic ducks to a V-shaped finish line.
While the first five ducks across the finish line secured prizes for their owners, the whole group secured at least $50,000 in donations to CHRISTUS St. Michael Foundation, said Christy Lummus, the foundation’s development coordinator.
“From year to year, the donated proceeds have fluctuated, but this year, I’m confident that we will be getting at least $50,000, and hopefully more,” she said.
In the weeks before Saturday’s duck launch, donors adopted numbered ducks for $5 each or $25 for six. Owners of the first five ducks to finish won prizes.
Patsy Carver won first prize, a 2018 Kia Forte, while the second
prize, a $1,000 Dillard’s gift certificate, went to Joyce Megason. Don Rollins took home third prize, a $1,000 Holiday Cleaners gift certificate.
The Miller, James, Miller and Hornsby law firm won fourth place, a $500 Super 1 Foods gift card, while Julie Sinha took home a 65 Tundra Yeti Cooler as a fifthplace prize.
Lummus said net proceeds collected by the race since its Nov. 6, 1990, inception now total more than $1.6 million.
This year’s proceeds will help pay for an expansion of 3-D mammography services—aimed at detecting and treating breast cancer much sooner—at the CHRISTUS St. Michael imaging center, said Lisa Patterson, director of imaging services.
“We’ve had 3-D imaging here since 2012,” Patterson said. “This is just an expansion of services.”
Jason Rounds, chief operations officer for CHRISTUS St. Michael, said the community’s support of the foundation for the last 29 years has helped greatly in keeping needed medical technology in good supply.
“We wouldn’t have this without our community donors,” he said.