History of Warriors On the Water

Learn about the history and creation of the Warriors on the Water..    

 In 2005, Hal Abshire and Greg Lahr had gotten together about trying to do something for the Soldiers and Airmen who had just returned from the war.  Since they both were avid bass tournament fishermen, they thought that having an outing on the lake would be a great ideal.  But, one thing was missing, how to get started?  One day Hal received a call from Bob Cunningham, another bass tournament fisherman and President of the Carolina Bassers bass club.  Bob asked Hal what he thought about the idea of taking Soldiers and Airmen out on the lake for the day.  Hal said that this was the motivation factor in doing this project. 

The ironic part was that all three men were Desert Storm veterans. Hal is retired from the Air Force at Pope AFB, NC and Greg and Bob are retired from the Army at Ft. Bragg, NC. All three men had experienced military life and wanted a way to show their appreciation to the men and women following in their footsteps. The three met at lunch and ideas ran rapidly about what to do.  Soon Don Wenger (USA Ret.) came on board and became affectionately known as the Official Scrounger for the new organization.  Don has a way of getting the local businesses to sponsor this event.  The only problem was that there was no name for the organization and businesses wanted to know who was doing this event.  So between the three men, the name Warriors On the Water (WOW) was born. 

Sponsors have sent gifts in from Washington state all the way to Florida Keys.  It soon became apparent that Hal, Greg and Bob could not keep up with all of the planning of this event.  So they asked Captain Shawn Dalrymple to come on board to become the Treasurer and then Mrs. Bunny Powers was asked to become the Secretary and Website Administrator.  Mr. Scott Assmann was the first Tournament Director. Mr. Mike Bentley (USA Ret.), Mr. Ray Russ (USAF Ret.) and LTC Tim Toomey also helped with the planning of the first event which took place in May of 2006.

Since the early planning of the first event the organization has grown and we have added a lot of new faces. We have a committee that meets at least once a month year round and have had to form sub-committees to handle all the planning and details of putting on this event. The first year we took about 50 military persons on the water for a day of fun and fishing and this year we plan to do 150. We hope to be able to eventually grow to 200. We could not do any of this without the support of our sponsors,  boaters and volunteers. These are the persons behind the scenes that make this event possible.