Mill Hall firemen fishing breakfast a big hit
MILL HALL, PA —It was just like old times Saturday morning at the Mill Hall Fire Company as the Mill Hall firemen staged their 56th annual first day of trout season breakfast.
The fire company fundraiser started in 1965 and has been held every year since, the exception in 2020 when COVID forced a cancellation. The breakfast returned in 2021 but, with the virus still in play, the turnout was limited. But this year the community response was massive, a steady stream of diners throughout the four hour breakfast which ended at 10 a.m. Long-time fire company volunteer/trustee Bill Strunk called the turnout “outstanding.”
While the crowd inside the fire hall was large, the turnout of fishermen along adjacent Fishing Creek was down a bit from previous years as the water level was above its normal level due to heavy rains on Thursday.
Trustee Strunk, who has been a part of most of these breakfasts, told The Record earlier the breakfast makes for a great community event, an opportunity for Mill Hall area residents to put a face on the volunteers who belong to the Mill Hall Fire Company. The event, he noted, is one of the company’s bigger fundraisers each year, serving great pancakes and sausages to thousands and thousands of community members for better than five decades.
Strunk (as told to The Record back on the 50th anniversary) said the idea came about from a pancake event staged at the Lock Haven Elks in the early 1960s. Aunt Jemima was the pancake brand used (and the company provided an “Aunt Jemima” as part of the Lock Haven event staged by the Lock Haven Kiwanis Club).
Strunk said that breakfast led Mill Hall firemen Ted Reeder and Harold Rogers to incorporate a fire company breakfast into the start of the local trout season. They even tried to get Aunt Jemima to come to Mill Hall; that didn’t work, but the Aunt Jemima company provided the necessary pancake batter.
Aunt Jemina is no longer in play, but Saturday saw the firemen work from well before sunup until the last patron was served, this time serving the community pancakes rather than fighting its fires.
