Leaving a legacy

Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter

 

When Strathmore resident George Pinchbeck passed away in June of 2014, he left a hole in the community. He had been an active member of many organizations and a lot of the things he did in his life benefitted the youth in the community in some way.
He had spent 38 years as an educator, and was always interested in what was best for the youth and would get involved in various projects to bring more options to the town for the kids.
Terry Desserre, Pinchbeck’s son-in-law, spoke to town council on Feb. 4 about a new state-of-the-art, electronic LED baseball scoreboard the family would like to install at the Kinsmen Park ball diamonds.
“Since my father-in-law passed away, George Pinchbeck, we’ve been talking about things that we could do with the money that’s been donated to his estate, and something that was near and dear to him was the baseball and following the kids around,” said Desserre.
Whether the games were in Alberta, BC or even the United States, the Pinchbecks would try to be there.
“Our family has been involved in many sports through the years. George excelled at track and field and baseball as a young man,” said Marianne Pinchbeck, George’s wife.
When their kids, Holly and Geoff were younger, George would drive them to hockey games, basketball games, swimming and gymnastics.
“In recent years George and I loved watching our grandchildren Scott and Mitchell play hockey and baseball,” said Pinchbeck.
It was decided to take the money donated and use it towards buying a scoreboard for Strathmore baseball and the Kinsmen Park baseball diamond.
“Strathmore baseball will pay for the installation, and pay for all the parts. We have put together the monies for the scoreboard, they’ll do all the work to put it up, to put in all the supplies and our request (for council) is the power supply for it,” said Desserre.
Because the Reds are only playing a couple games a day on the weekend it would cost approximately $20 per year to run the board, and the power could be tied in to the fire hall.
It will be located in the back corner of the diamonds, near the firefighters memorial, which will allow people watching the games to see it directly off centre field.
Early on the Pinchbecks knew Strathmore was an excellent community to raise their family, and that love of the community has never changed.
“The people of this area helped us so much while George was so ill and continue to support me and my family in so many ways,” said Pinchbeck.
“I know he would approve of leaving the community a little better place by our family donating an (electronic) scoreboard at the baseball diamond.”
The scoreboard is set to go up when the ground thaws, hopefully in April.