The Shelby Rotary Club has had a golf champion in our club for decades. Not the kind of champion that wins golf tournaments although he has won his share of matches and tournaments. Fred Sanford has been a Shelby Rotarian since 1979 and our Golf Tournament Chair since 1985. He was a very young new Shelby State Bank employee and was encouraged to get involved in community activities. At the time Fred joined the Shelby Rotary Club, he joined a group of mature Rotary members that were his grandfather's age. At the time Fred joined, he was followed by several more young new businessmen who are now are the mature members of our club. Fred was elected President in 1985 and again in 2011. The same year he became President for the first time, Fred created and then chaired Shelby Rotary's 1st golf tournament. He worked with the local golf course, the Oceana Golf Club, to establish the calendar and the structure of the tournament. As of the first week in May 1985, the tournament was started and turned into a 35 year annual event. In the early years, Fred worked hard to solicit golf teams to participate in the area's first golf event of the season. There were years that it tried to snow, it rained and at times had light frost on the greens that delayed the start but never interrupted the tournament. As the tournament years rolled by, the 50 plus teams looked forward to the annual event. As the tournament years went quickly by, the moment Fred released the sign-up times, the 4 man teams filled the tournament schedule. He arranged for a simple but tasty menu for the two day event. The menu included brats with all the fixings on Saturday and sloppy joes on Sunday. Shelby Rotarians manned the kitchen each day to serve the hungry golfers. Fred also organized a Hole in One Contest and got the local businesses to sponsor the contest on Saturday. The contest required 3 shifts of 2 Rotarians as witnesses for the Hole in One contest. As of last year, without exact numbers, Fred's chairmanship of this event has raised about $100,000. Then, the year of 2020 happened and any chance of an early May golf tournament was gone. However, Fred was not going to have his 35 year streak broken. He met with the golf course and arranged for an alternative date in early August and hoped for the best. He informed the teams of the calendar date change and kept his fingers crossed that some of the teams would agree to play. Before he knew it, 39 teams signed up. He then held his breath that the golf course would be allowed to stay open. The morning of August 8th, 37 teams showed up and supported Shelby Rotary's Golf Champion Fundraiser, Fred Sanford for the 35th time. Fred recently retired from the Shelby Bank in January, 2020 but he is still a Shelby Rotarian and is our Golf Champion Fundraiser.
