Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 28, 1994 TAG: 9404280099
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHARLES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But she vows she will, if necessary. She admits she needs help.
Not so much for herself as for the young fishermen.
"There will be a rodeo this year, and it will be a good one," she declared. "I'm going to do it, if I have to crawl."
She's talking about the 43rd annual Ernest "Pig" Robertson Trout Fishing Rodeo held each year in Lake Spring Park in Salem. This year's event will be May 7, 9, 11 and 14.
The only people who can fish in the rodeo, named after Robertson's late husband, are children between ages 3 and 12, except for one morning - May 11 - that will be set aside for nursing home patients.
There is a six-fish limit.
Last year, the lake was stocked with 5,200 pounds of trout. About 1,500 children and 100 nursing home patients participated in the four-day event.
Robertson is concerned because she is the rodeo coordinator, a job she took over from her husband who died in December 1984. He founded the event in 1951.
For many years, Martha Robertson has been the rodeo's chief fund-raiser.
This year, however, she has been afflicted with strange illnesses and debilitating side effects from medication and has not been able to get out and knock on doors.
"I'm trying to do what I can on the telephone," she said. "But there are days that I don't feel like even calling anyone."
She has called many people, and Robertson said she is gratified that many of her donors from past years are coming through again this year, even without a personal visit from her.
But despite the loyalty of past donors, she's running about $1,000 behind what she normally raises by this time.
Both money and merchandise for prizes are still needed, she said.
Robertson is getting some fund-raising help from personnel in Salem's Department of Parks and Recreation.
Charlie Hammersley, director of the department, estimated that about $7,000 had been raised toward the $10,000 cost of putting on the fishing rodeo.
Not only are money and merchandise needed, but Robertson said she still needs caring adults to help children handle their fishing rods and bait.
The fishing rodeo started in 1951, when Ernest Robertson was a member of the House of Delegates representing Salem and Roanoke County, a post he held for eight years.
A fisherman, he convinced many property owners along the Roanoke River to allow fishing from their land in the late 1940s.
But it became apparent that the river was not a suitable place for young children to learn how to fish. This was when "Pig" Robertson decided Lake Spring would be a good place for a children's fishing rodeo.
He won the support of Salem Town Council (Salem was not a city then) and solicited donations from businesses and individuals.
Martha Robertson said that during one of the early rodeos, "Pig" ran afoul of police.
He was driving back from West Virginia with a flat-bed truck loaded with 100-gallon drums of water and fish, Martha said. A State Police trooper stopped him because it looked like the truck was overloaded.
"But he talked his way out of it somehow," Martha said, and got all of the fish back to Salem.
Martha also recalled a time when greedy adults almost wrecked the rodeo.
Adults, on the pretense of helping their own children, would do the fishing themselves and catch large containers of fish, sometimes preventing some of the children from fishing.
A man once pulled a knife on a small boy and forced him to stop fishing, she said.
"People doing that could fish the lake dry in no time," she said.
It was that kind of behavior, Robertson said, that led her to persuade Salem to adopt a law restricting the rodeo to children and set the six-fish limit.
Anyone wishing to donate or help with the rodeo this year can sign up through the Salem Department of Parks and Recreation at 375-3057 or mail contributions to the department at 216 S. Broad St., Salem, 24153.
by CNB