Summit Sportsmans Association

friend in business in Akron in 1964. My family moved into a home just 2 blocks from where I was born and raised. My wife and I had 4 children by now but I realized I needed to reestablish some fishing activity around myself. I enjoyed fishing as a boy fishing Wyoga Lake (just a short bike ride away) and in high school, the Portage Lakes. I had a high school friend whose parents had a cottage on West Reservoir, part of the Portage Lakes. Of course there was a boat, but we soon built our own. We fished every opportunity we got on weekends and summer vacation. So, needless to say, when I settled back in Cuyahoga Falls again, I needed to fish. I was also quite active in the Catholic Church, specifically Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church (IHM). It was a natural to start a fishing club for men from the church. Together with my original fishing mentor, Orville Hibinger, my brother-in-law Joe Smead and my cousin John Huffman, we approached the pastor of IHM, Fr. McIntyre for permission to start a fishing club in the parish and meet at IHM. So in October of 1964, we had our first meeting of the IHM Hunting and Fishing Club. It was a long name for a club, but we loved it and off we went. After 2 months, Fr. Mac didn’t like the idea we were serving beer in the church basement meeting room, so we moved to the American Legion hall here in Cuyahoga Falls. We stayed there for many happy and productive years. We had a meeting every month with a full slate of officers with yours truly the first president of the club. We also had at least one outing every month and since we all were fisherman first, that’s the kind of outings we had. Our object was to fish all the local lakes. We felt we had enough water all around us that we wanted to master the local lakes. Well we did but one guy, no matter where we fished (Denny Babb) got all the fish and we could catch none. (That is until Ron Scheetz joined the club years later and gave Denny a run for his money). We were quite a competitive club right from the first. By January of 1966, I started to write a monthly newsletter. I felt the way to keep a club together was to have a monthly newsletter. It would be a way to keep in touch, to tell of future plans for fish outings and report the names of those winning the fishing contests. This has been going on now for 44 years. “Way to go Club!”
We soon realized that our interest were beyond just hunting and fishing, so one cold winters night the club voted to change the name to the “IHM Sportsmens Club”. Several years later, I realized we had long since left IHM and we needed a more universal club name. We needed a name that reflected the geographic scope of the club. I proposed the name “Summit Sportsmens Club” or SSA. It was short and snappy; the membership voted; and so it is. And that is the way it went in the early years of the SSA. I got a lot of happiness, comradeship and adventure from the club over the years. They were great years. I hope those who read this will find the same joy and happiness I have received from the members and the club.