LIVE EVENTS
The Rotary Club of San Marcos held their annual Casino Night fundraiser at the Commemorative Air Force Central Texas Wing hangar last Friday. The event was a sellout, with more than 300 entry tickets sold for the Mardi Grasthemed gala, which featured vintage WW II airplanes as the backdrop to black jack, craps and roulette tables.
Guests gambled to win raffle tickets for a range of door prizes from local businesses, including a pair of two-carat diamond earrings San Marcos Mayor Jane Hughson and Hays County Commissioner Morgan Hammer were among the guest blackjack dealers. “It’s so much fun,” said Mayor Hughson. “I would rather deal than play, because you can’t lose.”
San Marcos Rotary Club Foundation Chair Bruce Smith said that Rotary has settled on the CAF hangar at the San Marcos airport as the perfect location for the fundraiser.
“This venue has so much personality and history,” said Smith. “Our visitors can see these great airplanes and also go through the museum. It enriches the experience. It’s the gaming, the Mardi Gras, the food, but then you get all this history.”
Event proceeds benefit the Dick Burdick Rotary International Scholarship at Texas State University and other Rotary Club of San Marcos service projects.
Dick Burdick was a TXST alum and longtime Rotary member and San Marcos resident whose unconventional thinking led to the introduction of heat transfer cement. He would go on to found Thermon, Inc., which relocated to San Marcos in the 1970s, and served as its long-time chairman. He was also active in community, serving on the Southwest Texas State University Business Advisory Council and the Board of Trustees of the Southwest Research Institute. Burdick died in 2018.
Rotary Club Casino night was sponsored by LaCima, Divided Sky Roofing & Solar, Chuck Nash Auto Group and Brent & Liz Tuttle, among other businesses. The Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity provided volunteer dealers and staff for the event. The Hoodoo Daddies played Mardi Gras favorites and rock ‘n’ roll classics.
The Central Texas Wing Museum houses seven aircraft for which the Wing has maintenance and restoration responsibility: a very-rare flying Bell P-39Q Airacobra Miss Connie, the NAA B-25J Yellow Rose, a Vultee BT-13 Valiant, a Cessna U-3A Administrator, a Beech C-45 Expeditor Lone Star Lady, the NAA AT-6 Texan and the Douglas Sktrain C47 named That’s All Brother.
The Commemorative Air Force (CAF), formerly known as the Confederate Air Force, is an American nonprofit organization based in Dallas that preserves and exhibits historical aircraft at airshows and museums, primarily in the U.S. and Canada.
Ladonna Haag and Brian Thomas try their luck at the roulette table. Daily Record photo by John Clark
Laura Cardona and Michael Cardona dressed for Mardi Gras at Casino Night. Daily Record photo by John Clark
Morgan Hammer, Hays County Commissioner for Pct. 3, was one of the guest blackjack dealers. Daily Record photo by John Clark
