Donations rescue TrekFest in Riverside, Iowa

After a brief period of uncertainty, Riverside’s TrekFest will go on as scheduled June 24 and 25.

The weekend-long festival celebrates the city’s self-proclaimed position as the “future birthplace” of “Star Trek”’s Capt. James T. Kirk. Problems arose recently when the Riverside City Council voted not to fund the $10,000 needed to put on the event this year.

Sponsor Riverside Area Community Club put out a call for donations, and this week, the Mindbridge Foundation’s board of directors voted unanimously to give the final $5,000 necessary to ensure the festival would go on.

Based in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, the non-profit helps to organize science fiction, anime, animation and gaming conventions in Eastern Iowa.

“We’ve been listening to the media and learned that the (Riverside Area Community Club) was short $10,000,” Mindbridge representative Dennis Lynch said. “Our role is to promote science fiction and give back, and TrekFest is a wonderful thing that is deserving of that support.”

Organizers said TrekFest plays an integral role in generating additional revenue for local businesses and funding for various needs in Riverside throughout the year, including academic scholarships for local youth.

“Like it or not, I think it’s a great thing that Riverside has that designation as the ‘future birthplace of Captain Kirk,’” former mayor Bill Poch said. “The community needs to embrace it and support TrekFest. It is money well spent — profits are turned back into the communit

Waterloo, Davenport, & Kolona fellow-fans took us to Riverside Park in 1999, while the starship used in the parades was still fairly new and looking good. It was a couple of months after Trek Fest, so we missed that.

We were on a ‘Trek trek” around the country to meet several members of the now defunct Prodigy (Classic) Star Trek BBS that we had long corresponded with online...and make ‘mandatory’ visits to a few relatives.

Our primary purpose was to drive from Oregon to Miami...dropping off a trailer load of stuff at the SD ranch ‘on the way’... for a Star Trek cruise, meeting up with still more fans we already knew. After the cruise, we stayed with one couple for 2 weeks, after driving their art work auction purchases, which they couldn’t fit into their airline baggage, back to Cleveland for them.

We met up with fans in Missouri, Louisiana, Ohio, Iowa, Kentucky, and Wisconsin. We had a blast.

In Iowa, we all met up...total strangers (and there’s NOBODY stranger than Trekkies!)... at the Ox Yoke Restaurant in the Amanas, just in case any of us were really bat’leth murderers in disguise. *<];-’)

We still visit back & forth with some of them; and keep in touch with a few more. Sadly, some have died; one just plain disappeared without a trace.

'the Riverside City Council voted not to fund the $10,000 needed to put on the event this year'

KHAAAANNNN!!!!!!

"But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away, for his name is Obama."

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