Texarkana Citizens are Superlative in Ways that Matter!
Generous, caring, supportive–establishing and living out generational legacies of passing on the same–all for the benefit of the community: that is the superlative “stuff” of so many of our local citizens.
For their final official podium speech thanking the citizens of Texarkana USA, the leaders of the 2023 Clay’s Golf and Guitars reflected on their nine-year history of raising funds for the Clay Eichler Memorial fund annually with a fundraising day focused on two things Clay loved: Golf and Guitars. Speaker Barbara Glick reported that, through the generosity, support and love of their friends, neighbors and supporters over the past nine years, they had raised and donated closed to one and a half million dollars for the betterment of our community.
Gail & Dr. Ed Eichler started the Clay Eichler Memorial Fund in 2015 following the untimely loss of their son Clay. Each year, the Clay Eichler Memorial Fund donates all profits from Clay’s Golf and Guitars to benefit worthy local organizations needing financial assistance. The recipients of these funds raised by this event are chosen by the board on a rotating basis.
Over the nine years of the annual fundraiser, the funds generated and donated have annually averaged $150,000 and have benefitted Texas A&M Texarkana, the ArkLa Tex 100 Club to help meet the needs of local first responders, the Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club, Haven Home, and in this final year, TRAHC’s Arts programming downtown, serving Texarkanians of all ages and demographics, while catalyzing yet another thriving anchor of downtown vitality.
All has been brought from a board of seven women who cared enough to make a mark in the community in the name of Clay, and who were tenacious enough to go forward without any background in fundraising. Their superlative caring and tenacity, coupled with the generosity of many hundreds of friends, neighbors and supporters each year, through the million and a half dollars raised and donated, has had an impact on our community.
But possibly AS importantly, the example set by this small but tenacious group adds to the long-running legacy of this truly amazing community and its citizens, with this board as models of individuals who imagine how they might come together and do something that might help the community excel, and then stepping up to lead the way in making it happen.
For all of it, and in the name of Clay’s Golf and Guitars and the Clay Eichler Memorial Fund, we celebrate the SUPERLATIVE – and ongoing – legacy and role of Texarkana’s amazing citizens in Texarkana as a community of excellence.