-Dan Phelan
Sales Manager – Cross Current Insurance Group
Fishing will still be here when this pandemic is over.
You may be reading this and thinking that you’re hit harder than everyone else and need help just as much as them.
Because you had to lay off employees.
You had a month worth of clients cancel.
Your sales are down.
Your kids are driving your crazy.
Your fly shop was deemed non-essential.
Your access to a boat ramp was closed.
You had to cancel your trip to Disney World this week.
People have stopped placing online orders for your products.
We know this situation sucks and your business and livelihood are being hit hard. It sucks for us too. But if not being able to go fish right now is your biggest concern in life, it means you’re still healthy.
It means you’re able to apply for an SBA loan to help you get through the next couple months.
It means you’re still able to feed yourself and your family.
It means you still have a roof over your head.
It means you can afford to put gas in your car.
It means you have running water.
It means you have electricity and an internet connection that lets you complain on facebook about how terrible your life is right now.
It means your kids are still able to remotely go to school.
It means you can get yourself to a hospital if you get sick.
It means you’re not worried that you don’t have enough PPE to safely get through a work day.
It means you’re not on a gurney in a makeshift hospital in Central Park.
It means there are people that are much worse off than you are.
There are people in my community, as well as in yours, who need our help RIGHT NOW. We’re asking you to think very hard about how you can shift your own skill set, network, resources, and priorities to adapt them towards a team effort to contribute to the greater good of our country.
We believe that the people and the businesses who start acting selflessly right now will be the ones who are remembered as the heroes who helped us survive this pandemic. Not the ones that posted pictures of their fish while their governments pleaded for them to just stay home.
I want to be able to tell my grandkids that I helped my neighbors and my community instead of going fishing every day because it was good for my mental health.
I want to be proud of the sacrifices I made that helped our country get through this; just like many of our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents did in world war 2. My own grandfather lied about his age so he could join the Navy to help our country, yet many of us can’t be inconvenienced enough to take a single week off from going fishing.
To help our doctors and nurses.
To help our first responders.
To help the employees who are working tirelessly in grocery stores and pharmacies.
To help the restaurants and school cafeterias who are feeding the unemployed and the people who rely on these services to feed their children.
To help the homeless.
To help our elderly neighbors and those who are most at risk of not surviving if they get sick.
To help the people who have no one else to help them get through this.
I’m not asking you to expose yourself unnecessarily to covid19 or go work in a hospital.
I’m not suggesting you do anything that puts your family or your own health at risk.
I’m not drafting you to go fight against an enemy that wants to take over the world.
Our trenches in this fight are not ones that we dug in the fields of rural France to protect us from a foreign army. They are our homes. Our living rooms. Our backyards. Our neighborhoods.
I’m just asking you to stay home for one week of your life.
