In my mad rush to obliterate hundreds of useless email messages I receive each week, I sometimes miss something worthwhile. And then, while searching through the trash for an email I really needed but dumped in my haste, I “rediscover” something of value.
Such as the press release I received Monday from National Marine Trades Scholarship regarding applications for its program and their April 15 deadline.
I know why I initially trashed it. According to the release, the NMRA awarded a trio of $1,000 scholarships to students attending the Great Lakes Boat Building School, Marine Trades Institute and the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding.
Such paltry sums—it’s not as if there are “big bucks” to be had. Who could blame me, right?
Wrong. As in I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Because the future of the marine industry is at stake. Whether support for such efforts comes via four-, five- or even six-figure sums doesn’t matter. What matters is that it comes, period. It all helps.
In case you’ve missed it, young people are not flocking to mechanical trades, much less those in the marine world. That’s not a generational indictment—generation-bashing is as mindless and pointless as it often is wildly inaccurate. It’s just reality, and one nonprofit organizations such as the National Marine Trades Scholarship program and the likes of Fort Myers Offshore, which raises college and trade school money through its events, are helping address.
For the record, Fort Myers Offshore raised a club-record-setting $100,000 in scholarship money last season.
Of course, living in Cape Coral, Fla., I’m aware of Fort Myers Offshore and its impact, perhaps a bit more than most folks as club leaders Tim and Cyndee Hill are my landlords. I’m in the thick of it, so to speak.
But I must pay closer attention to my email and be less eager to trash things. Because in my haste to lose that sea of clutter, I risk missing an important wave.