Team MacDill gets 'Hooked for the Holidays'

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Brandon Shapiro
  • 6th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  Fifty service-members from MacDill Air Force Base partook in the first ever 'Hooked for the Holidays' fishing event, Dec. 20, 2013, due to generous donations from five Tampa Bay community organizations.

Leaving the docks from Madeira Beach, Fla. on the Hubbard Marina's Friendly Fisherman, the group set off to their destination, a sunken reef, eight miles out in the Gulf of Mexico. Upon arrival, and for the next three hours, the group fished, joked, and networked.

"This event was a wonderful chance for us to relax and get to know some really great people," said Senior Airman Hector Mendez-Chavez, 6th Medical Group bioenvironmental engineering technician, and heir to the biggest catch of the day. "I loved every minute of it."

At the end of the day, the group brought back over 100 fish, mainly snapper and grouper, which were cleaned, packaged and ready for the service-members to take home and enjoy.

"Many things symbolize this great country we call America, but there is one value we hold above all others, the one thing more precious than life itself--our freedom," said Bob Harbison, Vietnam veteran and tour participant. "Thousands have paid the ultimate price to keep America free. We owe everything we have ever had, and will ever have, to those who fight to keep us free. Seeing the joy in these young Americans was a thrill never to be forgotten."